LA 



VV4- 



PARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 




BULLETIN, 1917, No. 18 



HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL 
EDUCATION IN DELAWARE 



By STEPHEN B. WEEKS 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

1917 





Class L A S>. 
Book^s^t 



DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 



BULLETIN, 1917, No. 18 



HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL 
EDUCATION IN DELAWARE 



By STEPHEN B. WEEKS 

BUREAU OF EDUCATION 




WASHINGTON 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

.1917 






ADDITIONAL COPIES 

OF THIS PUBLICATION MAY BE PROCURED FROM 

THE SUPERINTENDENT OF DOCUMENTS 

GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 

WASHINGTON, D. C. 

AT 

20 CENTS PER COPY 



In the same series : 

Bulletin, 1912, No. 27. History of Public School Education in Arkansas. 

Bulletin, 1915, No. 12. History of Public Sc loolJEducation in Alabama. 
In preparation: 

History of Public School Education in Arizona. 

History of Public School Education in Tennessee. 



D. of D. 
OCT 6 191/ 




c 



CONTENTS. 



Page. 

Letter of transmittal 5 

Acknowledgments 6 

Chapter I. Colonial growth and development 7 

I. Original settlements: The Swedes, the Dutch, and the English 7 

II. Education among the Swedes and the Dutch 10 

III. Education among the English settlers before the Revolution 14 

Chapter II. The first attempts at State education 19 

I. The State school fund period, 1796-1829 19 

^W. The beginning of school legislation 23 

The laws of 1817, 1818, and 1821 24 

The reasons for their failure 26 

III. Sunday school legislation 27 

IV. Further legislative discussion 28 

Gov. Collins's message of 1822 29 

Discussion by following governors 30 

V. Statistical summary of the school fund to 1829 34 

Chapter III: The beginnings of public schools 36 

; I. Willard Hall, 1780-1875 36 

t II . The free school act of 1829 and its later amendments, 1 830-1860 38 

Provisions of the act of 1829 39 

Amendments of the act of 1829 and their significance 41 

III. The educational conventions of New Castle County, 1836-1855; the 

growth in demand for centralization 44 

The New Castle County educational conventions summarized, 

1836-1855 45 

Judge Hall opposes normal schools 47 

Decentralizers versus centralizers 57 

IV. Actual accomplishment, 1829-1861 66 

The Delaware School Journal, 1854-55 67 

. Beginnings of public schools in Wilmington 69 

Supplementary agencies 70 

Normal schools discussed 70 

Statistics for the period 72 

Chapter IV. The first State taxation for schools 73 

j I. Educational legislation, 1861-1875 74 

The proposed bill of 1873 '. 78 

II. The Delaware State Normal University, 1866-1871 79 

III. Progress during the period 82 

Chapter V. The State system : Administrations of Groves and Williams, 1875-1887 84 

I. The free school law of 1875 and its accomplishments 85 

Summary of the law 85 

Administration of J. H. Groves 86 

Administration of Thos. N. Williams 91 

II. The development of incorporated town and city schools 92 

General development of incorporated schools and the law of 1879 93 

The further evolution and growth of Wilmington schools 94 

3 



4 CONTENTS. 

Chapter V. The State system — Continued. Page. 

^ III. Development of State education for negroes 99 

Beginnings in Wilmington 99 

Work of the Delaware Association for the moral and educational im- 
provement of the colored people 99 

The provisions of the act of 1875 begin connection with the State 102 

Transfer of negro schools to the State completed, 1892 105 

Statistics 107 

Chapter VI. The State system: Administration of the State Board of Edu- 
cation, 1887-1898 108 

I. The State school law of 1887 : Later legislation, 1891-1895 109 

Superintendent's office abolished 109 

Provisions of the new law 110 

The law of 1829 finally repealed 110 

Reapportionment of State money Ill 

^ Legislation on negro schools '. - 111 

II. Public school development, 1887-1898 113 

Condition of the school fund 114 

Disadvantages of decentralization 116 

Need of a normal school 117 

- The free textbook law 117 

Decay of the schools 120 

Chapter VII. The State system: Reorganization and development, 1898-1913 . . 122 

Influence of the constitution of 1897 123 

I. The revised school law of 1898. 124 

II. Development and legislation, 1898-1913 .- 127 

The State board on the weaknesses of the system 127 

Its report for 1898 128 

— Grading of schools and development of high schools 128 

-« Method of distributing funds revised 130 

Provision for normal training in other States 131 

Irregular attendance 132 

Library development 133 

State board abolished in 1911 and reorganized 134 

Chapter VIII . The reorganized State board of education and its report of 1913; the 
State su^perintendency reestablished; the more recent legis- 
lation 138 

I. The report of the State board in 1913 139 

II. The State superintendency reestablished ". 149 

III. The campaign of 1916: Discussions and investigations 152 

School buildings 152 

School attendance 153 

IV. The school legislation of 1917 158 

Chapter IX. Retrospect and prospect 160 

Public school statistics 169 

I. School population, teachers, property and revenue, enrollment and at- 

tendance 169 

II. School receipts and expenditures, State only 170 

III. Statistics by counties, 1832-1911 171 

Bibliography 176 

Index 1 179 



LETTER OF TRANSMITTAL. 



Department of the Interior, 

Bureau of Education, 

Washington, January 2, 1917 . 

Sir: Legislative and executive officers, teachers, and citizens in 
the State of Delaware are now cooperating as they have not done 
before for the advancenlent of public education and the improvement 
of public schools in that State. For some time this bureau has been 
cooperating with the State commissioner of education and others in 
this movement and has begun a survey of education of the State 
which will now be continued by and under the direction of a commis- 
sion created by act of the legislature at its recent session. As a part 
Of this general survey and as a background to the study of present 
educational conditions in the State, I recommend the publication of 
the accompanying manuscript on the History of Public School Educa- 
tion in Delaware. It has been prepared at my request by Stephen B. 
Weeks, of this bureau. 

Respectfully submitted. 

P. P. Claxton, 

Commissioner. 

The Secretary of the Interior 

5 



ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. 



The author of this study wishes to acknowledge with thanks the 
many courtesies that he has enjoyed at the hands of citizens of Dela- 
ware. The Hon. James H. Groves, first superintendent of free schools 
of the State of Delaware, the Hon. Henry C. Carpenter, assistant 
secretary, and Dr. Charles A. Wagner, the first commissioner under 
the reorganization of 1913, have read the manuscript and made 
valued suggestions. Information has also been courteously furnished 
by Mr. Clifford J. Scott, superintendent of the city schools of Wil- 
mington; by the Hon. George S. Messersmith, formerly secretary of 
the State board of education and now United States consul at 
Curacao, West Indies; and by the Hon. Henry C. Conrad, judge of 
the supreme court of Delaware; while the detailed and accurate 
History of Education in Delaware by the Rev. Lyman P. Powell, 
D. D., LL. D., now president of Hobart College, has been always a 
valued guide and a constant source of inspiration and delight. 

S. B. W. 

6 



HISTORY OF PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION 
IN DELAWARE. 



Chapter L. 

COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 



I. ORIGINAL SETTLEMENTS: THE SWEDES, THE DUTCH, AND THE 

ENGLISH. 

The territory known at the middle of the seventeenth century as 
New Netherlands extended from the Hudson (or North River) to 
the Delaware (or South River). The first settlements in what is 
now the State of Delaware were made by the Dutch and the Swedes. 
In actual attempts at settlement the Dutch took precedence. David 
Pieterszen de Vries, toward the close of 1630, embarked in person 
with a company of about 30 adventurers, who commenced a settle- 
ment the next year on the South, or, as it is now called, the Delaware 
River, near the present site of Lewes. "'The voyage of De Vries/ 
says the eloquent and exact historian of the United States, 1 'was the 
cradling of a State; that Delaware exists as a separate Common- 
wealth is due to the colony of De Vries. 2 ; " 

Such was the sentiment of students of two generations ago . Those 
of the present are in close accord with this conclusion. Says Rt. 
Rev. Frederick J. Kinsman, Bishop of Delaware, in an address 
delivered on occasion of the Hudson ter-centennial in 1909: 

It is, nevertheless, unmistakably true that there is nothing in history more pecu- 
liarly Delawarean" than Delaware's early connection with the Dutch. Two facts 
make this especially evident: First, the great river from which our State takes its 
name, the South River of New Netherlands, was made known to the civilized world 
through discoveries of a Dutch expedition; and, second, the Dutch settlement at 
Swaanendael [Lewes] in 1631 was indirectly the means of Delaware's becoming an 
independent colony and Commonwealth. Had the followers of De Vries never 
spent those few months preceding their massacre at this spot, we should all now be 
citizens of Maryland, and all that has made Delawarean history must have assumed 
a different aspect and have lost its distinct character. 3 

But it was not given the Dutch to make their first colony on the 
South River a permanent one, for when De Vries returned to the 

i Bancroft's History of the United States, orig. ed., II, 281. 

2 See the introductory note to Gerard T roosts translation of the Voyages of David Pieterszen de Vries 
(Hoorn, 1655), printed in the Collections of the New York Historical Society, 2 series, vol. 1, 1841, p. 245. 
For other volumes of documents bearing on the early history of Delaware, see: Documents Relating to 
the Colonial History of New York, vol. 12, n. s. 1 (Albany, 1877); Papers Relating to the Colonies on the 
Delaware, 1614-1682, in Pa. Archives, 2 s.. vol. 5 (Harrisburg, 1877); and Narratives of Early Pa., N. J., 
and Del., ed. by A. C Myers (N. Y., 1912). 

3 See the Celebration of the 300th Anniversary of the Landing of the De Vries Colony at Lewes, Del., Sept. 
22, 1909. Del. Hist. Soc. Publications, No. 54. 

7 



8 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Delaware in 1632 he found his colony destroyed and the site laid 
waste, without a solitary survivor to make known their fate. It 
was sufficiently apparent, however, that this had been the work of 
the neighboring Indians, and after endeavoring for some time to 
ascertain the perpetrators of the tragedy, De Vries sailed to the 
New Netherlands, and Dutch settlement of Delaware territory was 
for a time at an end. 

While De Vries made the first attempt at actual settlement, 
another Dutchman had, at a still earlier date, looked toward the 
Delaware as a source of trade and commerce. Willem Usselinx, a 
Hollander, a native of Antwerp, had proposed in 1624, to Gustavus 
Adolphus, King of Sweden, a plan for a Swedish trading company 
to be extended to Asia, Africa, and America. Usselinx had been 
connected with the Dutch West India Co. and was able to make 
extended reports about the country on the Delaware, its fertility, 
convenience, and other advantages. A Swedish charter, dated 
December 21, 1624, was obtained; the company was granted privi- 
leges, and Usselinx was to have as his share the one-thousandth part 
of all goods which the company should buy or sell. The plan was 
recommended by the King to the States; was confirmed by them 
in the Diet of 1627, and man j persons became associated. The 
company, known as the South or Swedish West India Co., promised 
to become a rival of the older Dutch West India Co., but the rise of 
the German war arid the death of Gustavus Adolphus at Lutzen in 
1632 interfered with and delayed the execution of its plans. 

The plans of the South Co. were soon revived, however, by Peter 
Minuit, another Hollander, who had been director general of New 
Netherlands under the Dutch West India Co. between 1624 and 1632. 
Minuit had fallen into disputes with the principals of that company, 
had been recalled and displaced, and thereupon went to Sweden and 
revived the propositions of Usselinx. These were received with 
pleasure by Queen Christina and were patronized by the chancellor 
and by the wealthy. 1 A colony under command of Minuit, who was 
most admirably fitted for the work, was sent out in two ships in 
1638; land was bought from the Indians on the west side of the 
Delaware River, extending northward from Cape Henlopen to the 
falls of Trenton. The colony settled about where Wilmington now 
is. Fort Christiana was built on the banks of the Eiver Christiana and 
by this name this settlement, from which was later evolved the 
State of Delaware, was long known. 2 It grew by slow accretions 
from the home country, by the coming of Dutchmen from New 
Netherlands, and later along with the development of Pennsylvania. 

1 Myers, in Narratives of Early Pennsylvania, etc., p. 60, points out that no record confirming tfce state- 
ment that Charles I of England renounced all claims to the Delaware country in 1634 has been found. 

2 See Acre'ius, Isaac: New Sweden, or the Swedish settlements on the Delaware, first publ'she I at 
Stockholm in 1759, now translated by Rev. Nicholas Collin and printed in the Collections of the New 
York Historical Society, 2 series, vol. 1, p. 408 et seq. 



COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 9 

The governors of New Sweden on the Delaware were Peter Minuit, 
Peter Hollaendare, Johan Printz, Johan Papegoja, and Johan Clason 
Rising. Their rule extended from 1638 to 1655, and their political 
horizon was filled with constant bickerings with the Dutch who had 
never surrendered their claims to the territory. But New Nether- 
lands was also weak, and new Sweden managed to maintain its 
political independence until 1655, when the Dutch came in force and, 
after gaining a bloodless victory, incorporated New Sweden into 
their own dominions. Both colonies had long felt the thrust of the 
English-speaking peoples westward from New England and north- 
ward from Virginia and Maryland. The pressure of this common 
enemy forced Dutch and Swedes to sink their own squabbles in the 
presence of a common danger, but in 1664 this pressure could be 
resisted no longer. New Netherlands became New York, and 
English dominion was unbroken from New England to the Carolinas. 

For the time being Delaware was attached to the government of 
New York, although claimed by- New Jersey and Maryland. In 1682, 
on the organization of the Pennsylvania government, it was granted 
to Penn to give his province of Pennsylvania an outlet to the sea and 
came to be known as "the territories," the "lower counties," or 
"Delaware Hundreds" of Pennsylvania. They were the cause of 
much quarreling and political jealousy and gave rise to much popular 
discontent, for the governmental relations of the two were unsatis- 
factory. Finally, in 1703, Delaware was reorganized as a separate 
colony with an assembly of its own, although under the same gov- 
ernor as Pennsylvania. This relationship was maintained till the 
War of the Revolution and then fell apart of its own weight as a 
result of the feeling of the times. So much for the political and 
governmental relations of Delaware down to the date when it became 
an independent and coequal unit in the Federal Republic. 

Delaware is the second smallest State in the Union, having accord- 
ing to the census of 1910 a land area of 1,965 square miles and a 
total land and water area of 2,370 square miles. The decennial 
growth of population has been as follows: 

Year. Population. Rank. 

1790 59,096 16 

' 1800 64,273 17 

1810 72,674 19 

1820 72, 749 22 

1830 76,748 24 

1840 78,085 26 

1850 91,532 30 

1860 112, 216 32 

1870 , 126, 015 35 

1880 "... 146, 608 38 

1890 168, 493 43 

1900 184, 735 45 

1910 202, 322 47 



10 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

In land area and population (1910) the counties range as follows, 
counting from the north: 

Sq. miles. Population. 

New Castle 435 123, 188 

Kent 617 32, 721 

Sussex 913 46. 413 

In 1910 there were 197,813 native Delawareans living in the 
United States; of these, 137,131 lived in Delaware and 60,682 lived 
in other States, of whom 19,779 lived in Maryland and 15,724 in 
Pennsylvania. In 1900 there were 13,810 foreign-born residents of 
the State, and in 1910 this number had increased to 17,492. From 
these figures it may be concluded that at the present time the popu- 
lation of the State is predominant in native stock and essentially 
homogeneous. * 

II. EDUCATION AMONG THE SWEDES AND THE DUTCH. 

The fortunes of the Swedes were rot essentially or materially 
changed by their conquest by the Dutch, nor did either of these 
nations find itself wrenched from its old moorings by the succeeding 
conquest by the English. They continued to live their own life in 
their own way, without let or hindrance. As early as 1642 and 1643 
the Swedes had ministers of their own. There were others before 
the conquest by the Dutch 1 and we may assume, perhaps with a 
large degree of certainty, that these ministers were also to a certain 
extent teachers and in this way kept living the traditions of light 
and learning which these people had most certainly brought from 
their old homes. In the course of time the Dutch and the Swedish 
settlers became much intermingled, but the Swedes gave tone and 
^character to the community. 

Says Ferris: 

The language of the Dutch had such an affinity to that of the Swedes that their 
children soon understood, the religious service in the Swedes' churches, and freely 
joined in their worship. The Dutch had no regular ministry among them, whilst 
the Swedes were careful to maintain public worship as constantly as their isolated 
situation would admit; and being much the larger portion of the population, especially 
about Christiana, the rising generation lost their Dutch character and language, so 
entirely that in the year 1697, Rudman, who had just arrived from Sweden as a mis- 
sionary, says: "We live scattered among the English, yet our language is preserved 
as pure as anywhere in Sweden." Several of their writers assure us that their char- 
acter, manners, and customs, at that time throughout the colonies, remained purely 
Swedish. 2 

Thus we see that at the end of the seventeenth century the English 
had changed but little the life of the original Swedish settlements on 
the Delaware. Says Powell, in his History of Education in Delaware : 

The English governor of the province allowed the Swedes perfect freedom in reli- 
gious and educational affairs. Their economic condition was excellent; there were 

1 Clay: Annals of Swedes on Delaware, ed. 1858, p. 33. 

2 Ferris, Benjamin: History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware (Wilmington, 1846), pp. 109- 
110, quoting first edition of Clay s Annals of the Swedes on the Delaware. See also Phila. edition of Clay, 
1858, p. 62. 



COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 11 

no poor among them. The Indians, far from attacking them, clamored for peace and 
the catechism. All circumstances, indeed, save three, conspired to promote educa- 
tion. These were the want of books, of schoolmasters, and of schoolhouses. 

It was to obviate some of these difficulties that the Swedes at the 
end of the seventeenth century asked to be taken under the religious 
care of the church in Sweden. In response to that request and by 
the King's special order, pastors were sent out from Sweden to preach 
to them their own particular forms of religious belief and in the 
Swedish tongue. With these ministers were sent Swedish books, 
Bibles, catechisms, hymnals, and similar aids to the spiritual life. 
We know that at least one of these ministers established a school, 
and it is safe to say that what formal teaching there was in the 
colony was under their direction and control. This Swedish mission 
to settlers on the Delaware did not terminate till the death of Rev. 
Nicholas Collin in 1831. 

Little is known of the real educational condition of the colonists 
during the Swedish and Dutch regime and how extensive were the 
changes wrought by the coming of the English. There were of 
course no public schools in the modern use of the term. Such schools 
as existed were either private or church or more likely were private 
under church supervision and direction. 

It is perhaps possible to arrive at a safe estimate of what was 
probably the educational situation in the seventeenth and eight- 
eenth centuries in Delaware by taking a brief review of the educa- 
tional situation in the countries from which the settlers had recently 
come. Such a review is furnished by Wickersham in his History of 
Education in Pennsylvania. 

According to Wickersham, in the seventeenth century the Dutch 
and the Swedes were both far ahead of the English in matters of 
education. In writing of these early Swedish and Dutch settle- 
ments on the Delaware in what are now Pennsylvania and Delaware, 
he remarks that at the time the first Swedish colony was planted on 
the Delaware there was no regular system of public education in 
Sweden, but that the church was active in its efforts to educate the 
young and home instruction was general. He continues: 

Holland was, without doubt, the first country in Europe to establish a system of 
public schools, similar to the schools now known by that name. The work was begun 
under the Prince of Orange, in the latter part of the sixteenth century. * * * It 
was during their 12 years' sojourn in Holland, without doubt, that the Pilgrim Fathers 
obtained the germs of that system of education which has made New England so 
famous in our educational history, and it was in Holland too, almost certainly, that 
William Penn learned those broad principles of educational policy that are embodied 
in the frame he constructed for the government of his province and that he endeav- 
ored to have incorporated into laws for the benefit of the people. 1 

1 Wickersham, J. P.: History of Educ. in Pennsylvania, pp. 3-5. 



12 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Wickersham then makes the proper application 'to the situation 
on the Delaware in the seventeenth century: 

Let no one expect to find well-organized schools and skilled teachers, for this mere 
handful of people in a wilderness, 3,000 miles from home and help, had to win the 
battle for existence before they could give much attention to the arts that cultivate 
and refine; but to such as have the patience to follow the narrative, it will appear that 
efforts greatly to their credit, under the circumstances, were made to instruct their 
children in the elements of common learning and to acquaint them with the essen- 
tials of Christianity. 1 

He continues: 

The churches no doubt served the place of schoolhouses in the early days, and tht- 
clergymen so far as they were able filled the double office of preacher and teacher. 
Two hundred years ago churches and schools were generally under one control in 
Sweden, Holland, and other European countries, and the schoolmaster was nearly 
always the minister's assistant, reading for him, leading the singing, visiting the sick, 
and in his absence taking the vacant place at the sacred desk. These customs were 
brought to America, and it may be safely said that so far as the early settlers on the 
Delaware had churches they had schools, and so far as they had ministers they had 
schoolmasters. * * * It was clearly impossible, however, that children living 
many miles distant from the churches * * * could be gathered for instruction 
frequently or regularly into the three or four places of worship which the colony af- 
forded. Necessarily, therefore, the ministers and their assistants visited families 
as far as practicable, and, in conjunction with parents, taught the young what they 
could, at least to read and write and recite Bible lessons and the catechism. This 
plan of home instruction came early to the Swedes, for it was practiced very largely 
in the thinly settled portions of the mother country, and has not been discontinued 
even at the present day. When, therefore, there was a want of clergymen, there 
was a want of schoolmasters, and a dearth in religion was followed by a lapse into 
ignorance. 2 

In this review, Mr. Wickersham points out what was to be ex- 
pected from people who had such antecedents as had the Swedes 
and the Dutch in the seventeenth century. In his History of Edu- 
cation in Delaware, Rev. Lyman P. Powell, now president of Hobart 
College, New York, has gathered together from the scattered sources 
what was actually accomplished by these people in the matter of 
schools and his study is here briefly summarized. 

The first Swedish schoolmaster who emerges from the mists of the 
past is Sven Colsberg, who in 1699 was engaged as bell-ringer at 
Christiana, and as the salary of that office was insufficient, to his other 
duties was added that of teaching and on the " 10th of June, in the 
name of the Lord, Sven Colsberg began his schoolkeeping for a half 
year at the above-named place." In 1716 Arvid Hernbohm, " quiet 
and capable/' then master at Wicaco, in what is now Philadelphia, 
was invited to Christiana where he was promised " honorable and satis- 
factory support." But Hernbohm declined. Johan Gioding came 
in his place and the school was opened in Johan Gustafsson's house 
June 17, 1717. The pastor was present with as many of the par- 

i Wickersham, J. P.: History of Educ. in Pennsylvania, pp. 2-3. 2 Ibid., pp. 15-16. 



COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 13 

ents as could attend; he examined the children as to their profi- 
ciency and then recommended them to their teacher. A year later 
Mr. Gioding held a public examination of his pupils. 

He asked questions regarding the most important Christian doctrines, requiring 
proof from Holy Scripture, to which questions of Mr. Gioding, to the surprise and 
gratification of all, they answered promptly and boldly, and so quickly confirmed 
their answers by a text of Holy Scripture that all the company present could not 
refrain from glorifying God with tears of joy and gladness for their children's quick 
memory and attainments and the schoomaster's diligence and circumspection. 1 

It appears that the burden of supporting Swedish schools now 
increased to such an extent that none were kept between 1722 and 
the coming of Acrelius in 1749. The children were sent to English 
schoolmasters, who taught them simply to read, but Acrelius urged 
upon his congregation the importance of preserving the Swedish 
language in its purity as it had then (about 1750) "very much fallen 
out of use," and under his leadership Nils Forsberg, a student from 
the University of Lund who had recently arrived, was employed 
as a sort of traveling educational missionary. Moving from house 
to house, he took up his temporary abode with first one family and 
then another and in this way instructed their children. 

In summarizing the whole educational system among the Swedes 
in Delaware during the colonial period, Powell says : 

The protracted struggle for separate and distinct Swedish schools was abandoned 
before the Revolution, and their subsequent history was merged into that of the 
Lutheran and Episcopal Churches. The reason for this is not far to seek. After the 
coming of the English in 1682 many of the Swedes began gradually to drop their 
native speech. Education in the Swedish language declined, and it became cus- 
tomary for Swedish children first to learn English and then the tongue of their fathers. 
Acrelius said that all children in his day could read English, write, and cipher. More 
attention was doubtless given to reading than to writing, particularly in the early 
period, for many made their mark instead of signing their names to documents. House 
instruction by the pastor was the last flickering light of education among the Swedes. 2 

With the Dutch the evidence for schools is still more scanty than 
for the Swedes. The first provision made by the Dutch for education 
in what is now Delaware seems to have been the offer by the city 
of Amsterdam in 1656 to settlers on Delaware Kiver to "send thither 
a proper person for schoolmaster, who shall also read the Holy Scrip- 
tures and set the Psalms." The city of Amsterdam was "until 
further opportunity" to provide his salary. It was also required 
that at New Amstel (now New Castle) "a house for a school, which 
can likewise be occupied by a person who will hereafter be sexton, 
psalm setter, and schoolmaster" should be erected, but we have no 
record that such schoolhouse was really built or that one existed in 
the colony of Delaware before 1682. There are, however, records 

• Powell, L. P.: History of Educ. in Delaware, p. 18. 2 Powell, p. 20. 



14 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

of Dutch schoolmasters in the colony, and some of their names have 
come down to us, including Evert Pietersen, Arent Eversen Molina er, 
Abelius Zetscoven, and Andreas Hudde. 1 

III. EDUCATION AMONG THE ENGLISH SETTLERS BEFORE THE REVO- 
LUTION. 

A modern writer, Eight Rev. Frederick J. Kinsman, Bishop of 
Delaware, has emphasized the differences between the Dutch and 
the English by saying that, while the Dutch cared comparatively 
little for education as contrasted with the New Englanders, they 
cared more for the amenities, comforts, and graces of social life. 27 
But Dr. Wickersham says: 

As a social or political force the Swedish and Dutch settlers on the Delaware were 
scarcely felt after the arrival of Penn. They were soon surrounded by a more positive, 
more pushing, better educated class of men, and few of them came forward to take 
advantage of the new and broader field of effort that opened before them. They 
remained good, loyal citizens, working quietly on their farms or in their shops, and 
at times serving with apparent reluctance and in small proportion to their numbers, 
as local officers, on juries, or in the legislative assemblies of the province. In their 
descendants they gave the State some of its most worthy citizens and illustrious 
names. 3 

This judgment is not contrary to the conclusions formed by Powell 
and other authors who have been quoted already. In the seventeenth- 
century the Dutch learned Swedish and tended to forget their own 
tongue; in the eighteenth century the Swedes "who became separ- 
ated from their countrymen or who mingled little with them after 
the coming of the English, soon lost the use of their native tongue 
and were absorbed by the swifter currents of social and religious lif e- 
into which they were thrown." 4 They began to teach their children 
English even before they learned their mother tongue, and all the 
evidence goes to show that long before the Revolution the English- 
were the predominant element in the population. 

What then did the English do for popular education in the pre- 
Revolutionary period? Previous to the coming of Penn, indeed 
from 1640 on, isolated English families, some from New England r 
others from Maryland and Virginia, had attempted to settle along 
the Delaware, but while they were generally repulsed by the stronger 
Swedes and Dutch, they were not expelled; they gradually grew in 
power and even under the administration of Delaware as a part of 
New York some provisions had been made looking toward education, 
as will be seen by an examination of the laws promulgated by the 

1 Powell, L. P.: History of Educ. in Delaware, pp. 24-25. 

2 Bishop Kinsman's address in Publications Del. Hist. Soc, No. 54, p. 10. 
s Wickersham: History of Educ. in Pennsylvania, p. 19. 

4 Wickersham: History of Educ. in Pennsylvania, p. 79. In certain isolated settlements like "Wicaco,. 
Kingsessing, and Upper Merion, all near Philadelphia, they continued to speak the Swedish language- 
for 150 years after this first settlement." It was this that made possible the continuation of the Swedish 
mission down to 1831. 



COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 15 

Duke of York. But with the coming of Perm in 1682 the English 
came at once into greater prominence than they had ever occupied 
before in the province, and Penn's Frame of Government, thanks to 
his enlightened association with the Dutch in Holland, contained a 
provision that "the Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and 
order all public schools and encourage and reward the authors of 
useful sciences and laudable inventions;" it laid the foundations for 
industrial education also by providing that all children of the age 
of 12 should be taught "some useful trade or skill, to the end none 
may be idle, but the poor may work to live, and the rich, if they be- 
come poor, may not Want." 1 

The laws passed by the Assembly of Pennsylvania in 1682 and 1683 
indicate the intention to provide immediately for the establishment 
of public schools and for the introduction of industrial education 
in accord with the ideas of Penn. Universal education was clearly 
contemplated, and had this been accomplished for Pennsylvania we 
may safely assume that Delaware would have received equal benefit. 
But the good work, educationally speaking, thus inaugurated under 
the direction of William Penn, did not long continue. A do-nothing 
policy was soon in the ascendant. Says Wickersham: 2 

The provincial authorities of Pennsylvania, as has already been stated, did next to 
nothing to promote the cause of general education during the long period from the 
beginning of the eighteenth century to the end of their rule in 1776. Charters were 
granted to a few educational institutions, some laws were passed securing to religious 
societies the right to hold property for school purposes, and in special cases enabling 
them to raise money by lottery to build schoolhouses; but this was all. Penn's broad 
policy respecting public education was virtually abandoned. Intellectual darkness 
would have reigned supreme throughout the province had not the various churches 
and the people themselves been more alive to the importance of the subject than the 
government. 

What actually happened to Pennsylvania also happened to Dela- 
ware. The government itself did nothing. What was done was the 
work in the main of private denominational activity. In this work 
the Quakers and the Episcopalians led. 

Before 1686 Christopher Taylor, a classical scholar and a Quaker 
minister, founded a school on Tinicum Island, where Gov. John 
Printz had established his headquarters and which is now in Penn- 
sylvania. Taylor refers to the island as " Tinicum, alias College 
Island." It does not appear that the Quakers established any school 
in Delaware before the one at Wilmington in 1748. This school has 
had a continuous existence to the present time. 3 

The efforts of the Quakers had been anticipated by the representa- 
tives of the Church of England, to whom, through the venerable 
Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, is given 

1 See Thorpe, F. N.: Federal and State Constitutions, vol. 5, p. 3062. 

2 History of Educ. in Pennsylvania, p. 78. 

3 Powell, L. P.: History of Educ. in Delaware, pp. 30-32. 



16 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

the honor of making education universal throughout the State of 
Delaware/ for the efforts of the Quakers were mostly confined to 
the northern section of the colony. In 1705 Rev. George Ross was 
sent by the society as a missionary to New Castle, where he re- 
mained for many years. The importance of education was ever 
before, his mind. In 1711 the vestry petitioned the society for a 
schoolmaster. But none seems to have been sent, for in 1729 Ross 
himself petitioned the authorities in England that u a small salary of 
£6 per annum may be allowed to a catechist or schoolmaster in this 
place to encourage his instructing youth in the church catechism.*' 
The business of education was at that time in private hands and was 
conducted by a different class of teachers. In a history of his church 
Mr. Ross has this to say as to the conditions of education in 1727: 

There are some private schools within my reputed district which are put very often 
into the hands of those who are brought into the country and sold for servants. Some 
schoolmasters are hired by the year, by a knot of families who, in their turns, entertain 
him monthly, and the poor man lives in their houses like one that begged an alms, 
more than like a person in credit and authority. When a ship arrives in the river it is 
a common expression with those who stand in need of an instructor for their children, 
"Let us go and buy a schoolmaster." The truth is the office and character of such a 
person is generally very mean and contemptible here, and it can not be otherwise 'til 
the public takes the education of children into their mature consideration. 2 

Missionaries were sent from time to time to other sections of the 
colony, but it does not appear that they at any time engaged in the 
formal work of education, although devoting much time to instructing 
the people in the use of the liturgy, in catechising the children, and 
in similar work that lies on the borderland between simple religious 
instruction and formal teaching. Says Powell at the end of his 
review of the work of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel: 

Brief as is this sketch of the society and its work in Delaware, it includes all that 
the records have revealed, and suffices to establish the society as the most important 
agent in the State at large in the last century for the propagation of education as well 
as the gospel. Moreover, it is equally clear that New Castle and Dover, whither 
missionaries were first sent, became the Iona and the Lindesfarne of this little Teu- 
tonic commonwealth, for they sent forth missionaries to its remotest bounds. 3 

There were individual private schools taught at various times 
during the colonial and revolutionary period, some of whose teachers 
attained to a local celebrity which has handed down their name and 
fame to the succeeding generations. One of these was John Thelwell, 
a schoolmaster famous in Wilmington during revolutionary days: 
another was Mrs. Elizabeth Way, a celebrated teacher of needlework 
in 1790, under whose instruction " the art of shirt making was strictly 
attended to, and fitting and cutting was taught here with neatness 

1 For an extensive study of Dr. Thomas Bray, the founder of the S. P. G. and his work in Maryland, see 
Dr. Thomas Bray: His life and selected works relating to Maryland, edited by Bernard C Steiner (Bal- 
timore, 1901). 

2 Powell, pp. 36-37, quoting Perry's Hist. Colls. Relating to the Amer. Col. Ch., V. p. 47 et seq. 

3 Powell, L. P.: History of Educ. in Delaware, p. 38. 



COLONIAL GROWTH AND DEVELOPMENT. 17 

and care." In 1748 the Quakers established their Friends' School in 
Wilmington, which has'had a continuous existence since that time. 
The old academy of Wilmington was built about 1765,, and instruction 
in it was begun before the Kevolution. The object of the academy 
was declared to be to promote "religion, morality, and literature," 
and in 1786 a formal curriculum of studies was drawn up and adopted 
which mark it as a classical academy of the orthodox type. Par- 
ticular stress was laid on Latin, Greek, and mathematics, but English 
was not neglected, showing that the institution was ahead of its time. 
As the life of Wilmington became more normal after the close of hostili- 
ties, the school facilities became more abundant, some of them being 
conducted by men who later became famous in other lines, the best 
known being the celebrated political writer, William Cobbett, pub- 
lisher of Porcupine's Gazette, and Lewis Cass, candidate for the 
Presidency in 1848. 

The educational history of Wilmington during the early days is 
that of other cities, mutatis mutandis. It has been seen how the 
city of Amsterdam sent a teacher to New Castle as early as 1657; ' the 
comments o£ Missionary Ross on the educational situation in 1727 
have been quoted, and it was from New Castle as a. center that the 
Presbyterians of New Castle Presbytery in days long before the 
Revolution sent forth a stream of missionaries to the old South who 
laid in the States to which they were sent the foundations of denomi- 
national schools from which came later by evolution the public 
schools of to-day. As early as 1738 the Presbytery of Lewes laid the 
foundation for Delaware College. In the absence of an organized 
public-school system, other towns organized for themselves, and 
independently of the State, schools that had more or less of municipal 
direction and care if not support, but, as they were in reality private 
schools, no further consideration of their work is necessary in this 
study. Suffice it to say that from the time of the Revolution, and in 
some cases before that date, private schools began to be founded in 
most of the towns and villages of the State and furnished fair oppor- 
tunities for education to those who wished and who could pay for its 
privileges. The curious reader who is interested in this subject will 
find a fuller presentation in Powell's History of Education in Dela- 
ware, where there has been brought together from various sources the 
scattered material extant relating to this interesting subject. 1 

The conclusion of 'the whole matter seems to be that, as far as 
education was concerned, this was available to a greater or less 
extent during the whole of the colonial period to all who had the 
ambition to desire it, the energy to seek it, and the money with 

1 S33 also Schirf's History of Delaware, II. 683-698 (1888); Elizabeth Montgomery's Reminiscences ol 
Wilmington (written in 1851); Ferris's History of the Original Settlements on the Delaware (1846); Wick- 
ersham's History of Education in Pennsylvania 

9310G— 17 2 



18 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

which to pay for it. During the Swedish and Dutch periods educa- 
tion was in the hands of the church. Religion and education had 
not been clearly differentiated. The minister or his assistant served 
also as the teacher. Under favorable conditions the children were 
gathered for instruction, but where conditions were unfavorable the 
teacher visited the homes of the children. As the Dutch language in 
Delaware made small progress against the Swedish, so the Swedish 
soon began to lose ground against the more progressive and aggressive 
English. The government of Penn even started out with the promise 
of government-supported schools but later failed to make good its 
promise, and during the eighteenth century the educational institu- 
tion on which the people found it necessary to place their main 
reliance was the private school, generally under church direction or 
with denominational support. These grew up from time to time in 
the leading towns of the province and served the purpose of giving 
some of the people the elements of an education which was of the 
prevailing classical and cultural type, but in which the government 
as such had no part. The educational opportunity of the State did 
not come till after the dawn of independence. , 



Chapter II. 

THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 



I. THE STATE SCHOOL FUND PERIOD, 1796-1829. 

There is nothing on the subject of education in the Delaware 
State constitution of 1776. 

A second State constitution was framed by a convention which 
met in New Castle in June, 1792. It was put into operation without 
being submitted to the people. This constitution has one reference 
to education: 

The legislature shall, as soon as conveniently may be, provide by law * * * 
for establishing schools, and promoting arts and sciences. 1 

It does not appear that there was any immediate action in recog- 
nition of this mandate of the organic law. No law was immediately 
passed, nor does it appear that the governors of the State in their 
messages to the general assembly made any reference in those years 
to the subject of education. 

In 1796 the State took its first step toward meeting the instructions 
of the constitution of 1792. 

On February 9, 1796, there was passed an act for the creation of a 
school fund which became the basis of the public school system of 
Delaware and which has been of preeminent importance in shaping 
the policy and giving tone to the administration of schools. 

The act of 1796 provided that all the money accruing from marriage 
and tavern licenses, from 1796 to January 1, 1806, should be appro- 
priated and known as "The fund for establishing schools in the 
State of Delaware." The State treasurer for the time being was 
constituted its guardian, under the name and style of "The trustee 
of the fund for establishing schools in the State of Delaware." He was 
authorized to receive gifts, donations, and bequests from individuals 
to whom the faith of the State was pledged. When the money in 
hand was sufficient, the trustee was to invest it in shares of stock 
of the Bank of Delaware, the Bank of the United States, the Bank 
of Pennsylvania, or the Bank of North America, and with the divi- 
dends arising therefrom to purchase other shares. He was to 
make an annual settlement with the general assembly and once a 

1 Art. VIII, sec. 12, constitution of 1792. See Thorpe's charters and constitutions, vol. 1, p. 580. The 
section was carried over, without change, into the constitution of 1831, where it becomes Art. VII, sec. 11. 
See Thorpe, I, p. 596. 

19 



20 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

year publish a list of the gifts received, with the names of the donors. 
The fund itself, at some time in the future, date not specified, was to 
be applied to the establishment of schools in the hundreds of the 
counties "for the purpose of instructing the children of the inhabitants 
thereof in the English language, arithmetic, and such other branches 
of knowledge as are most useful and necessary in completing a good 
English education," but it was further provided that the fund 
should not be applied "to the erecting or supporting any academy, 
college, or university in this State." * 

On January 24, 1797, an act supplementary to the school fund 
act of February 9, 1796, was passed. This act ordered the school 
trustee (the State treasurer) to sell the three shares of stock of the 
Bank of Delaware already acquired and apply the receipts, together 
with any other moneys he might then have in hand or receive, to 
the purchase of the shares of the stock of that bank reserved for the 
State by the act of incorporation. It was also enacted that the money 
arising from marriage and tavern licenses should be first applied to 
the payment of the chancellor and judges, 2 and then the remainder 
was to be appropriated for the establishment of schools. The money 
thus appropriated to the payment of the chancellor and judges was 
evidently intended as a temporary loan to tide over any distress 
in the State 'treasury, for the sum thus used was to be replaced by 
money accruing to the State from arrearage taxes. 3 

Between 1797 and 1806 there seems to have been no further legis- 
lation on the subject of the school fund. In 1806 the act of 1796 and 
the supplementary act of 1797 were extended for seven years from 
January 1, 1806; 4 on January 27, 1813, they were again extended to 
January 1, 1820; 5 on February 8, 1822, they were revived and con- 
tinued in force "until repealed by law," and it was further ordered 
that the moneys which would have belonged to the school fund had 
the act been in force in 1820, 1821, and 1822 were to be reckoned up 
and invested in bank stock for the benefit of the school fund. 6 

Such is a summary of all the legislation in Delaware bearing on the 
school fund during this period. It is now proper to turn to an exami- 
nation of the efforts to make it of service. The first proposed use 
of the accumulating school fund was in 1803, when the inhabitants 
of Glasgow presented a petition for authority to establish a school 
and for help from the fund. The legislative committee to whom the 

1 Powell's History of Education in Delaware, 139. The act itself is ch. 105c, Laws of Delaware, II, 
pp. 1296-1298. 

2 This had been the law from 1793 to 1796. See laws of 1793, ch. 28c, sees. 4 and 5. Laws of Delaware, 
II, p. 1127. It would appear then that the law of 1797 was merely a return to the earlier form of procedure. 

3 Powell, p. 139, quoting Laws of Delaware, II, p. 1352 et seq., and VI, p. 327. See also ch. 133, Laws of 
Delaware, 1797, pp. 47-50. The moneys received from the trustees of the Loan Office and from the sale of 
vacant lands were to be invested in bank stock also, but "such shares, so subscribed, shall not be deemed 
or taken as any part of the fund for establishing schools in this State." — Sec. 5, ch. 133. 

4 See ch. 24, Laws of Delaware, 1806, IV, p. 52. 
& Ibid, 1813, IV, 596. 

6 Laws of 1822, ch. 144, p. 241. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION". 21 

appeal was referred recommended that they have leave to bring in 
the desired bill, but thought the fund was then "too inconsiderable 
for a general application" and that a grant from the fund would 
therefore " neither meet the wishes of the public, nor be consistent 
with the establishment" of the fund. 1 The bill was apparently not 
brought in; at any rate no such bill became a law. 

In a letter to Henry Barnard in 1865 Judge Willard Hall gives 
an insight into the condition of education in the State at the time 
these earliest efforts toward a State system were being made : 

In 1803, April, I came to Delaware and settled at Dover. There was then no pro- 
vision by law in the State for schools. Neighbors or small circles united and hired 
a teacher for their children. There were in some rare places schoolhouses. There 
was no schoolhouse in Dover. The teacher there in 1803 was a foreigner who hired 
a room and admitted scholars at prices. The teachers frequently were intemperate, 
whose qualification seemed to be inability to earn anything in any other way. A 
clergyman who had some pretensions as a scholar, but had been silenced as a preacher 
for incorrigible drunkenness, stood very prominent as a teacher. In the best towns 
it depended upon accident what kind of a school they had. In Wilmington at one 
time they had a very good teacher; he made teaching respectable, and interested 
parents in the instruction of their children. In Dover we sent to Harvard College 
in 1813 and procured a teacher who was with us several years. Afterwards we were 
left to chance, but fortunately generally had a good school. But even in the best 
neighborhoods, teachers of the young frequently were immoral and incapable; and 
in the country generally there was either a school of the worst character or no school 
at all. 2 

The first official recognition of the cause of public education by the 
governor of the State seems to have been that contained in the mes- 
sage of Gov. David Hall to the assembly on January 4, 1805. 3 He 

says: 

When we take into view the gross ignorance that prevails in some parts of this State 
among the lower classes of the people, for want of proper schools established in their 
neighborhood, we lament that the legislature has not paid a more early attention 
to this important duty. A law having passed in 1796 to create a fund sufficient to 
establish schools in this State and the fund at this time being considerable, I beg 
leave to recommend the application of such part of the said fund as the legislature 
shall judge proper to the establishment of schools as in the said act directed. 

Two weeks later, on January 17, 1805, we find the following in the 
journal of the house (p. 36). Its very brevity speaks with startling 
emphasis : 

Mr. Higgins laid on the table sundry petitions, signed by 256 inhabitants of New 
Castle and Sussex Counties, praying the legislature to pass an act to enable trustees 
to open schools and to appropriate the school funds, which were read. 

On motion of Mr. Higgins, seconded by Mr. Reynolds, that the said petitions be 
referred to a committee of three. 

On the question, it was determined in the negative. 

On motion of Mr. Higgins, seconded by Mr. Green, the petitioners had leave to 
withdraw their petitions. 

i H. J., 1803, p. 44. 

2 Barnard's Jour, of Educ, 1866, xvi, 129, quoted in part in Powell, 142. 

3 H. J., 1805, p. 8. 



22 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

This and nothing more. The first effort to pass a school law had 
failed. 

Gov. Nathaniel Mitchell, in his message to the assembly on January 
8, 1807, says: 1 

The state of our finances has gradually improved ; * * * we are flattered with the 
prospect of realizing the expectation of the legislature, in establishing funds compe- 
tent to the support of public county schools. This institution deserves encourage- 
ment. Ignorance is the bane of our Government. General information is its strongest 
pillar. 

But at this session no petition for schools was presented; no bill 
was introduced, and on February 5, 1808, the trustee of the school 
fund was instructed to invest all funds on hand in shares in the 
Farmers' Bank of the State of Delaware. 2 

For the next few years there was silence in Delaware on the subject 
of education. Indeed for the whole of these decades, short and 
simple are the annals of education, and what legislation does appear 
is mainly devoted to private institutions. A summary of these pro- 
visions may be properly included here: In 1810 the Dover Academy 
was incorporated; in 1811 permission was granted to raise by lottery 
$10,000 "for the use and benefit" of the trustees of the college of 
Wilmington ; the next year the Georgetown school in Sussex County 
was incorporated, as was the New Castle Library Co.; and the Glas- 
gow Grammar School was authorized to raise $1,000 by lottery; in 
1813 the " English schoolhouse" in Newark was to be repaired out of 
the proceeds of a lottery that was also to go in part to paving the 
streets of the town. In 1815 the Union School in New Castle Hun- 
dred and the Brandywine Academy in New Castle County were incor- 
porated. Two acts for lotteries to aid education were passed in 1816 
and these were followed by other acts of incorporation in 1819 (Milton 
and Seaford Academies). 

On January 7, 1813, Gov. Joseph Haslet said to the assembly: 

The school fund is also a subject for your consideration. The establishment of this 
fund must have been for general use, not for the erection of large and expensive 
seminaries, in the benefits of which very few can participate. A diffusion of knowledge 
is a principal concern in every republican government, whose great object is that each 
citizen may be able to come forward in public life, and avail himself of, and benefit 
society by, the exercise of those talents with which nature may have endued him. 
A man possessing the rudiments of education may improve himself by his own assi- 
duity. Some of the greatest characters have made themselves in this way. The want 
of the rudiments of education has kept in obscurity many who would otherwise have 
been extensively useful and has lost to the world abilities which might have been its 
greatest ornament. The income of the school fund is now such, that it is believed, 
without exhausting the whole of this income, but leaving the fund gradually to 
increase, appropriations might be made, which with such aids as the different neighbor- 
hoods in this State might easily and would readily afford, would establish, for limited 
seasons, schools in these neighborhoods sufficient to teach the rudiments of education. 

1H.J., 1807, p. 11. a H. J., 1808, p. 109. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 23 

As it is reasonable that the present generation should not live exclusively for posterity, 
but should avail itself of the advantages which it possesses for its own improvement, 
I submit to you the propriety of appropriating a portion of the income of this fund 
to the purpose above suggested. 1 

Gov. Haslet returned to the subject at the next session and said on 
January 5, 1814: 

The importance of education in a republican government is universally acknowl- 
edged. In this Government, all the citizens have equal rights; and are under equal 
obligations. Education confers the power of exercising these rights, and discharging 
these ' obligations to the greatest benefit of the individual and of the community. 
Good schools can not be extensively established without public assistance. I submit 
it to your consideration whether a portion of the income of the school fund could not 
bejisefully ^employed in establishing schools in the different neighborhoods of the 
State, for limited periods in each year. Such a system would be attended with most 
important advantages; and in carrying it into effect the legislature might confidently 
relyjupon contributions of the neighborhoods in which schools should be established, 
which would be increased as the benefits of the system became better known and 
more sensibly felt. 2 

It is evident that the plan of procedure in the mir d of Gov. Haslet 
was that of a system of education where a part of the expenses 
were met out of the income of the school fund ai d the remainder 
by the people, presumably in their private and individual capacity, 
but nothing was done that year nor in 1815. In 1816 a resolution 
recited that the trustee of the school fund then had on hand $4,753.72, 
which was lying idle and instructed him to invest the same in the 
Farmers' Bank of the State of Delaware, "or any other incorporated 
bank of this State." 3 

II. THE BEGINNING OF SCHOOL LEGISLATION. 

The general assembly of 1817 was the first to undertake the work 
of the actual organization of a public school system. It had already 
chartered various private academies and semipublic charity schools 
for "destitute orphans 7 ' in Wilmington and in New Castle, but these 
had asked no public funds for their maintenance, and none had been 
provided for them. This assembly had also inaugurated the policy 
of incorporating Sunday schools, but its most important educational 
work was the passage of an act — the first public act of its kind in the 
history of the State — for " appropriating part of the school fund for 
the education of poor children." This act appointed a board of trus- 
tees "to superintend the education of poor children within their 
several hundreds, in the respective counties of this State." The 
trustee of the school fund was then ordered for the year beginning 
February 1, 1817, to pay in quarterly payments to the treasurer of 
each county the sum of $1,000 per annum from any money in his 
hands. The amount available for each hundred was carefully fixed 

'H. J., 1813, pp. 30-31. 

2 H. J., 1814, p. 7. 

8 See resolution on pp. 157-158, Laws of Delaware, 1817, and chs. 108 and 113. See also H. J., 1816, p. 139. 



24 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

in the law, and the school trustees were authorized to expend these 
sums only — 

in the payment of such school masters, or teachers of reading, writing, and arithmetic,, 
as may, b v the trustees aforesaid, or a majority of them, within their several hundreds 
respectively, be intrusted with the tuition and education of poor children; . * * * 
such children as may be obviously unable to receive the rudiments of an English, 
education from any private or other source, except as hereinbefore provided. 

The trustees were to make reports — 

as to the number, character, and situation of the different schools and schoolhquses, 
in their respective neighborhoods, also the exact number, name, and ages of all the 
poor white children within their respective hundreds and their opinions as to the 
amount of money required to pay for their tuition together with such other particu- 
lars as they may deem necessary, to enable the general assembly at their next session,. 
to determine the competency, of the net proceeds of the fund for establishing schools, 
to defray the expense, which might be incurred by the tuition of all the poor white 
children within the State. 

The trustees were to make their reports to the county treasurers 
and these were to report to the general assembly. 

This was the law which launched the public schools as a clearly 
marked pauper system. 1 Financial details of the results of the law 
are not available to any great extent, but the report from Sussex 
County for 1817 made to the legislature on January 15, 1818, may 
illustrate the whole: 2 

Paid to Baltimore Hundred for use of schools $33. 94J 

Paid to Brcadkiln Hundred for use of schools 69. 22^ 

Paid to North West Fork Hundred for use of schools 38. 33 

141. 50 
Balance in hands of county treasurer unappropriated 108. 50 

250. 00 
Leceived from trustee of school fund 250. 00 

The law of 1817 was revised and reenacted on February 3, 1818. 
The new act began by appointing trustees for each hundred in the 
State who were "to superintend the education of the poor chil- 
dren within their respective hundreds." Beginning with January 
1, 1818, the trustee of the school fund was to pay each county $1,000 
in four quarterly payments, the proportion to each hundred being 
fixed in the law and devoted to — 

the payment of such school masters or teachers of reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
as may * * * be intrusted with the tuition and education of poor children r 
* * * such white children as may be obviously unable to receive the rudiments 
of an English education from any private or other source, except as herein before 
provided. 

i Wickersham shows in his History of Education in Pennsylvania, ch. 13, that the course of evolution 
of this phase of the subject was not essentially different in Pennsylvania from that in Delaware. A similar 
effort was made in Pennsylvania to educate the poor gratis. In that State more money was spent, the- 
idea persisted longer and met with substantially the same results. There were also experiments with 
Lancastrian schools. 

2 House Journal, 1818, pp. 37-38. On pp. 23-24 is a statement that from September to December. 1S1",. 
there was paid out on orders from the trustees of the various hundreds a total of $335. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 25 

The limit for three months' instruction was fixed at $2.50 "and 
a like sum in proportion for any longer or shorter term." The trus- 
tees in the hundreds were to keep close and exact accounts of their 
expenditures and of the children taught and report the same year 
to the county treasurer who in turn was to report to the general 
assembly. 

The local trustees were authorized and directed to pay to the 
Brandy wine Manufacturers' Sunday School, the Female Harmony 
Society of Wilmington, the New Castle Benevolent Society, and the 
Female Union Society of Smyrna such sums as might appear their 
just proportion for "the number of poor children by each of them 
respectively educated." The trustees appointed under this law 
(1818) were allowed to draw and expend such sums as had been 
allowed but not expended under the law of 1817. 1 

Fortunately there has been preserved a financial report from Sus- 
sex County made to the assembly on January 4, 1819, which may be 
used for comparison with the similar report made on January 15, 1818. 2 

SUSSEX COUNTY POOR-SCHOOL EXPENDITURES FOR 1818. 

Paid Indian River Hundred for education for poor children $51. 93 

Paid Broad kiln Hundred for education for poor children 102. 41£ 

Paid North West Fork Hundred for education for poor children 75. 76 

Paid Cedar Creek Hundred for education for poor children 100. 00 

Paid Lewes and Rehoboth Hundred for education for poor children 106. 00^ 

Paid Dagsborough Hundred for education for poor children 32. 97£ 

Paid Baltimore Hundred (balance of two years' appropriation) 136. 05^ 

605. 14 
Balance in hands of county treasurer 161. 88| 

767. 02^ 
Received from school fund trustee 750. 00 

Received from miscellaneous sources 17. 02£ 

767.02^ 
No other reports on the financial side of the act of 1818 are avail- 
able, and* this in itself would seem to indicate that no particular 
degree of success followed the enactment of these laws. Powell 
says (p. 140) that a few schools were organized and the way opened 
for further improvement, but the division of pupils into rich and 
poor was disliked, and the school fund came to be known as u a poor 
children's fund." This dissatisfaction is well characterized by 
Gov. Cochran, in his message in 1877, when he says: 

It is not surprising that a provision which invited a free-spirited and independent 
people to have their children schooled as paupers proved a failure. Perhaps the 
best fruit of this effort was that it excited a widespread discontent, which served to 
quicken interest in the subject, provoking discussion and stimulating to an earnest 
effort for a better matured and more efficient system. 3 

1 Delaware session laws, 1818, pp. 340-346. 

2 House Journal, 1819, p. 40. 

3 Message to general assembly of 1877, p. 16; also quoted by Powell, p. 140. 



26 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

It would appear from these acts that the purpose of the legislators 
was to promote the organization of schools which should draw their 
support entirely from public funds. There is no indication that 
private incorporated academies were expected to share in the dis- 
tribution of these public funds. This is evident from the supple- 
mental act passed in 1821, which provides: 

That for each and every poor white child taught at any incorporated or other 
regular English school within this State, and for whose tuition the teacher thereof 
can not in any other way receive compensation by reason of the indigence of such 
child and his or her relations and friends, one dollar per quarter, or four dollars annu- 
ally, shall be paid out of any unappropriated money in the fund for establishing 
schools within this State. 

Thus it seems not only was the education of the poor in Delaware 
to be branded as such, but it was to be done by contract at so much 
per head. The teacher was also required to make oath to his account 
and — - 

shall, moreover, obtain the certificate of at least three credible freeholders of the 
neighborhood that the child or children, for whose schooling the charges in said 
account are made, are such as ought to be entitled to the benefit of this act. 

It would seem that this system was about as far from the present 
public school idea as was possible. None but paupers could enjoy 
its benefits, and for fear that another might slip in unawares this 
poverty was to be attested by the neighbors. Public education 
was only for those who could not help themselves. The public 
acts of 1817, 1818, and 1821 were a failure, because the pauper idea 
was in the ascendant. The act of 1817 ordered a report on the total 
number of poor white children in the State. The law of 1821 allowed 
out of the school fund $1 per quarter, or $4 per year, for each. It 
would seem that the purpose of the supplementary act of 1821 was 
to draw still more distinctly the lines between pauper and self- 
supporting citizens, and, according to Powell (p. 141), added to the 
unpopularity of the earlier laws. The children who enjoyed its 
benefits became the butt of ridicule for their more fortunate com- 
panions. 

The conclusion is borne out by the State allowances for the edu- 
cation of poor children as provided for by annual enactments of the 
assembly, as follows: 

Act of February 8, 1822: There was allowed to the Female Harmony Society of 
Wilmington $195 "for the education of poor children" and to the Female Benevolent 
Society of New Castle $115, to the Female Union Society of Smyrna $48, and to indi- 
viduals $108. 63i 

Act of February 6, 1823: The school trustee was directed to pay claims of teachers 
for "the education of poor children," amounting to $482.26. 

Act of February 2, 1824: Female Harmony Society of Wilmington, $193.49; Female 
Benevolent Society of New Castle, $61.37; and to others, $240.13$. To this law was 
now added what was apparently a new section — that no teacher should be paid for 
more than 20 poor children in any one year. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION-. 27 

Acts of January 9 and February 8, 1825: Female Benevolent Society of New 
Castle, $76.11; Free Harmony School at Wilmington, $80; Female Benevolent 
Society of New Castle, $80; and to others, $220.90. 

Act of February 9, 1826: Free Harmony School, Wilmington, $80; Female Benevo- 
lent Society, $80; Female Union Society of Smyrna, $40.78; others, $156.90. 

Act of February 9, 1827: Female Benevolent Society of New Castle, $80; Free 
Harmony School, Wilmington, $80; to others, $280.41|. 

Act of February 16, 1829: Free Harmony School at Wilmington (for 1827 and 1828), 
$160; Female Benevolent Society of New Castle for 1827 and 1828, $160; Female 
Union Society of Smyrna for 1827 and 1828, $99.44; and to 48 individuals, $738.08, 
being an average of $15.38 in sums ranging from $1 to $66. 

These payments were all presumably for the two years 1827 and 
1828, as there was no session of the assembly in 1828. The laws 
show that these sums were distributed over every part of the State. 1 

III. SUNDAY SCHOOL LEGISLATION. 

It has been noted that the poor were to be educated out of the 
proceeds of the school fund. The first definite provision for public 
taxation for the purpose of education seems to have come in connec- 
tion with another section of the school law of 1821, that providing 
public funds for the support of Sunday schools. As is well known, 
the original idea of the Sunday school as advocated by Robert 
Raikes was not that of a school on the Sabbath for religious instruc- 
tion, but the use of the Sabbath for working boys who could attend 
on no other day and their instruction in secular learning and by 
paid teachers. It has been shown that an act of 1817 (ch. 131) in- 
corporated the Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School, in New 
Castle County. The law of 1821 (ch. 65) went further, for it pro- 
vided that every school in the State instituted for the education of 
children on the Sabbath day should be entitled to receive from the 
county not more than 20 cents per white scholar per annum, provided 
the schools in question should be maintained not less than three 
months in each year. The amount to be used in this way was not to 
exceed $200 for each county and was to be raised "as other county 
rates and levies are by the laws of this State." 

This seems to have been the first provision for public taxation for 
education in the State, and it is perhaps best to give at this point 
the subsequent history of this movement. Scharf reports 2 that up 
to 1829 under this law 29 Sunday schools had received aid: Female 
school at NewCastle, 100 scholars; Mill Creek, 40 ; Immanuel Church, 
New Castle, 93; Farm school, 50; St. James' school, near Stanton, 
95; New Castle school, 93; First Presbyterian Church, Wilmington, 
161; Newark male school, 20; Newark female school, 30; Mrs. An- 
derson's school, 23; Harmony school, 97; White Clay Creek, 120; 

1 See the original acts under these dates as given m the session acts. 

2 Scharf, J. T. : History of Delaware, 1609-1888, Philadelphia, 1888, 2 v., vol. 1, p. 444. 



28 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Brandywine Manufacturers' School, 191; Methodist Church school, 
Wilmington, 213; Second Presbyterian Church school, Wilmington,. 
150; Catholic Church school, 40; Protestant Episcopal Church 
school, 84; Brandywine village school, 50. 1 

Scharf gives also a list of the teachers in these schools and the 
amount received by each. The earliest teacher to be thus paid 
seems to have been P. Quigley, of the Brandywine Manufacturers' 
Sunday School, who received $17.20 for 86 pupils on September 20, 
1821. In 1822 the teachers in eight other schools were paid sums 
varying from $7.20 to $26.40, amounting in all to $87.20. At every 
meeting of the levy court appropriations were made for this purpose. 2 
The law seems to have long retained its popularity and is still in 
force, for the code of 1915 3 requires the levy court of each county to 
pay annually a to the teachers of each Sabbath school kept therein 
for three months or more in the year, 50 cents for each white scholar." 
The total payment in any one year in each county is limited to a 
total of $500, and it is required that Sussex County shall return 
annually to the levy court a statement of the manner in which the 
appropriation has been applied, and in the absence of such report no 
appropriation is made. Such statements for all the counties 
generally appear in the auditor's reports down to 1905. Since that 
date they are not found. 4 

Another phase of educational development of that date was the 
Lancasterian school. At the session of 1819 a petition " signed by 
260 citizens" was presented to the assembly praying the establish- 
ment of "a, model school on the Lancasterian plan." The matter 
was discussed, a bill was brought in to establish such a school in 
Wilmington, but it failed to pass. 5 

IV. FURTHER LEGISLATIVE DISCUSSION. 

While little seems to have been accomplished in the decade be- 
tween 1821 and 1829 toward the actual organization of public schools, 
they had at any rate reached in their development that stage of im- 
portance which helped them command attention from the governors, 
in their annual messages. 

i Allowance for Sunday schools, 1829 (see Auditor's Report for 1829, pp. 151, 162,-182): 

Sussex County , S126. 80 

Kent County 13. 60 

Newcastle 216.92 

357. 32 
• 2 By an act passed in 1852 (ch. 645) a report on the expenditure of the public funds granted for the use of 
Sunday schools was required under penalty of loss of further appropriations. 
3 See sees. 2190 and 2191 which have been brought forward from the code of 1852. 

< See the statistical tables printed at the end of this study. In 1867, chapter 134 repealed the law allow- 
ing $500 per year to each county for Sabbath schools and fixed an individual payment of 50 cents for each 
scholar (pupil) in Kent and Sussex Counties and 20 cents in New Castle. This in turn was repealed by - 
chapter 432, Laws of 1869, passed Feb. 9, 1869. 
5 H. J., 1819, pp. 41, 119, 154, 158. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 29 

Gov. Jacob Stout urged in his message before the assembly in 
January, 1821, "the expediency of establishing academies and 
founding a college for the education of youth." He was further 
persuaded that — 

the diffusion of knowledge among our citizens is indispensably necessary to the char- 
acter and prosperity of the State, and that we have too long neglected the establish- 
ment of institutions similar to those which now constitute the pride and glory of our 
sister republic. 1 

Gov. John Collins was the first, however, who showed any states- 
manlike grasp of the educational situation. In his message to the 
assembly on January 2, 1822, he devotes nearly one-half of his space 
to this subject. He emphasizes the importance "of devising the best 
practical means of promoting education/' for on it "depends the 
intellectual, moral, and religious character of the community." He 
said it was a matter "for surprise and regret that not even an experi- 
ment of public patronage had been made in the State;" it is true the 
means of the State are limited, but if "judiciously applied they might 
effect very important purposes." The counties had not been divided 
into school districts and there were few schoolhouses, but it was sug- 
gested that portions of the school fund might be offered the districts 
on condition that they "raise other specified sums by contributions." 
He insisted that these voluntary private contributions were necessary 
for the salvation of the schools : 

It is conceded that these schools must be supported, chiefly, by voluntary contribu- 
tions. It is probably best that it should be so; for that is rarely much prized which 
costs little; and it happens, according to the common principles of our nature, that 
some who would embrace the means of education if attainable for a price which they 
could afford, would altogether neglect them if offered as a free gift. It is submitted 
that the great object of the general assembly, in respect to the subject of promoting 
education, should be to excite the attention and combine the exertions of individuals; 
to attempt, by furnishing some public funds, to obtain greater voluntary contributions ; 
and by placing the subject in the view of the different sections of the country, to 
impress upon the minds of the people the principle that to provide the means of educa- 
tion is an important part of their concerns. 

With these views of the functions of the State in matters of educa- 
tion, it would naturally follow that Gov. Collins did not approve the 
laws of 1817, 1818, and 1821: 

I have on a former occasion questioned, and I now submit to your consideration, 
whether the appropriations, which have heretofore been made of portions of the school 
fund, for the purpose of education are consistent with the nature and intent of that 
fund, or calculated to produce so much good as might be effected in a different man- 
ner? * * * The charitable nature of the appropriations and the benevolent views 
with which they are made command our esteem, but it is wisdom to consider that the 
general purposes of education in which the whole community are interested demand 

iH. J., 1821, p. 17. 



30 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

more than our school fund can afford, and that duty therefore requires that no part of 
it should be diverted from its legitimate course. 1 

It will be noted that the central idea in the plan of action proposed 
by Gov. Collins was one of cooperation between the local community 
and the State. The community was to raise its funds by private sub- 
scription, and the State was to draw upon the school funds. This 
idea came, no doubt, from the suggestions of Willard Hall, then a 
member of the State senate and long/interested in the development 
of education. As will be shown later the school law of 1829 was his 
work, and the suggestions of Gov. Collins in 1822 are near enough to 
serve as the prototype of that law. But the time was not yet. More 
talk was necessary, the State had not yet made up its mind. 

At the session of 1823 little emphasis was put on education. The 
high-water mark of 1822 was now beginning to ebb, for Willard Hall 
was now no longer in the senate. Gov. Caleb Rodney satisfied 
himself with recommending to the assembly the consideration of — 

the propriety of adopting some specific plan for the permanent diffusion of education 
among the whole body of the people. * * * The elementary instruction of youth 
forms the basis of their usefulness to the State. * * * A knowledge of reading, 
writing, and arithmetic, which may be acquired in country schools under proper regu- 
lations, greatly contributes in all, * * * One striking feature of such a system is 
that it will comprehend the education of females, which is an object of the first impor- 
tance and almost of indispensable necessity. 2 

With the opening of the assembly in 1824 a new era for the schools 
gave promise of beginning. Gov. Charles Thomas took the matter 
up in his message and in eloquent terms reviewed the situation : 

I would earnestly press upon your attention the propriety of adopting some plan by 
which the means of education may be accessible to every member of the community. 
This is a subject of primary importance. * * * The school fund is gradually 
increasing; but, if permitted to remain untouched, it would require at least 20 or 30 
years before it would be sufficient to carry instruction into every family. If unused, 
with the most assiduous care one generation must pass away before it would be pro- 
ductive of any benefit to the community. In these portentous times it seems rather 
a hazardous experiment to permit one generation to sleep in ignorance , in order that 
light and knowledge may be extended to the succeeding. The best way to secure 
the blessings of education to the next generation is to confer them upon the present. 
Ignorance can not appreciate what it never enjoyed ; they alone who have been favored 
with the blessings of education can estimate them at their proper value ; * * * I would, 
therefore, recommend to your consideration the propriety of calling the school fund 
into active operation, and of supplying its deficiency to promote the object for which 
it was originally designed , by a school tax. Such a tax would be a blessing to the people , 
rather than a burden ; for it would tend to relieve them from the most intolerable of 
all burdens, the burden of immorality and ignorance. If, however, you should deem 
it inexpedient to encroach upon the present school fund, I would urge upon you the 

1 At the session of 1822 was presented the report to the Maryland Legislature on Jan. 30, 1821, on the grant- 
ing of public lands to the older States for educational purposes in order to even up those granted to the 
newer States. The Maryland report is reprinted and a strong report from the assembly committee sus- 
tained the Maryland contention (me H. J., 1822, pp. 15-31 and 74-80; and S. J., 1822, pp. 44-50). 

2 H. J., 1823, pp. 20-21. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 31 

propriety of laying a school tax for the purpose of the rising generation. A small tax 
would be sufficient if the State was divided into school districts and a certain sum 
allowed to every district that would furnish houses sufficient to accommodate a speci- 
fied number of scholars or a certain sum, for each scholar, to every portion of any dis- 
trict that will furnish a schoolhouse. In a country like ours, where all power, directly 
or indirectly, flows from the people, it is a matter of astonishment that the diffusion of 
knowledge and the extension of religion and morality among the people were not the 
first objects of public patronage. Some of our sister States have wisely extended the 
arm of public protection over the education ol the poor. I trust that you will not be 
backward in following this example. * * * In vain do we boast of our elective 
franchise and of our civil rights if a large portion of our citizens are unable to read the 
tickets which they annually present at the polls. Such men may think themselves 
free, but in fact they are slaves. Ignorance always has been, and always will be, the 
slave of knowledge. If information is generally diffused among a people, that people 
will always be their own masters; they will always govern. An enlightened people 
never has been, and never can be enslaved. * * * Sensible of the incompati- 
bility between knowledge and slavery, the masters of the Old World have closed every 
avenue against the people, and openly declared that a nation, to be kept in chains, 
must be kept in ignorance. The circulation of all books that advocate political liberty 
and civil rights has been suppressed, and the freedom ot the press is totally destroyed. 
* * * Enlighten the people; open schools for the instruction of the poor, and our 
liberty will be perpetual. But, if we close our ears against the admonitions of history, 
and shut our eyes against the light of experience, the fairest prospects that ever opened 
upon the world will be blighted, and the hopes of humanity and the prayers of the 
pious will be fruitless and unavailing. 1 

This eloquent address, although falling short of what would be 
to-day expected of an educational orator, was far in advance of the 
leaders of the day when it was delivered. There appears here the 
first suggestion of a tax for general public education in the history 
of the State. The idea of public education as intended primarily for 
the poor had not yet disappeared, but the signs are evident that the 
educational leaders of the State were thinking. This last remark 
does not apply, however, to some of the legislators. The discussion 
on education began in the assembly by inquiring how much had been 
actually paid out from the school fund under the pauper school 
laws of 1817, 1818, and 1821. 2 

This was reported to be : 

To New Castle County 1 $1, 937. 50 

To Kent County, $1,250, less $497.32£ refunded 752. 67£ 

To Sussex County, $1,000, less $270.38 refunded 729. 62 

Total expended for public schools under the acts of 1817, 1818, and 
1821 3, 419. 79^ 

A committee of the assembly then reported on the educational 
sections of the governor's message. This committee was convinced 
of the necessity of " doing something to improve the condition of 
schools." It was a lamentable fact that in some neighborhoods 
there were no schools, and in others " where they are established, 
they are, in many instances, from the incompetency and immorality 
of the teachers who conduct them, in the most unprosperous state." 

» H. J., 1824, pp. 10-12; S. J., 1824, pp. 8-10. 2 H. J„ 1824, pp. 31, 64-66. 



32 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

It was recognized, however, that until the funds were sufficient 
attempts at improvement would be disappointing and that expendi- 
ture's under the acts of 1817, 1818, and 1821 had been made "for 
the education of poor children without materially promoting their 
instruction/' for these children, except at schools in a few of the 
towns, had been taught "for such short and irregular periods that 
they could not have made any sensible progress in acquiring a 
knowledge of the first rudiments of learning.'' 

The committee estimated that in eight years from 1824 the school 
fund would have increased so as to yield an annual income of 115,000; 
that 300 schools were necessary for the State, to each of which $50 
might be allowed, or, still better, that the income of the fund might 
be apportioned as the needs of the pauper children might demand. 
It is everywhere assumed that the State fund for paupers was to be 
supplemented by private funds from those parents able to pay. 
This was probably the purpose of the assembly when organizing the 
school fund in 1796, for it " could not have been so visionary" as to 
suppose that the fund could ever be able to establish the new schools 
needed and support those already in existence. To accomplish that 
object a fund of $2,000,000 would be needed. Nor was it to be sup- 
posed that it was the purpose of the assembly to take these schools 
so entirely out of the hands of the people "as to have them exclu- 
sively supported at the expense of this fund." Nor was it to be 
imagined that the assembly of that day " could have conceived the 
idea of combining with the avails of the fund, after it should have 
attained some growth, a school tax to be levied on the assessments 
of the real and personal property of the citizens." 

It was estimated that a sufficient school tax would amount to 
$80,000, "a larger sum than the aggregate of the county rates and 
levies, poor and road taxes, raised in the State. This would be 
almost exclusively paid by the holders of real property, who being 
saddled with so enormous a tax, in addition to their present unequal 
burdens, would be grievously oppressed." 1 There follows a curious 
argument against the imposition of such a school tax, for it would 
be " peculiarly obnoxious to the proprietors of great freehold estates." 
In conclusion, the committee thought that the school fund, "being 
the only resource on which reliance can be placed for founding new 
schools and meliorating the condition of those now established," 
ought to be "kindly and carefully fostered" and that after eight 
years it might have so accumulated as to make it possible to put the 
schools "into active and useful operation." 2 

The arguments of this committee have been quoted so extensively 
for two purposes: (1) To show how far the people of Delaware still 
were in 1824 from recognizing universal taxation as the basal prin- 
ciple of public education; and (2) to explain the provisions and 
crudities, the looseness and weakness of the school law of 1829, for 

1 These freeholders paid tax on rental values only. 2 H. J., 1824, pp. 126-131. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 33 

in seeking to secure some result Judge Hall, when drawing that bill, 
had to keep himself within such bounds as would pass the assembly 
and be, to some extent at least, agreeable to the people of the State. 

This report seems to represent the end of the school-fund period 
of agitation for public education. There is little in Gov. Paynter's 
messages in 1826 and 1827 on the subject, and this little deals rather 
with home training and moral education than with "the mere acqui- 
sition of the arts of reading and writing, and of the knowledge of 
arithmetic, and of foreign and dead languages" for which the governor 
seems to have had a most sovereign contempt. 1 

It will be noted that the school-fund period extended from 1796 
to 1829, just a generation. The fund was based on slight, but cer- 
tain, sources of income. It began with nothing. In 1829 it had 
accumulated stocks worth in the market more than $158,000, although 
there had not been until 1829 any increase in the assessed valuation 
of State property. It appears that the fund was carefully and 
honestly administered, and while under supplementary laws it was 
constantly drawn on for money with which to pay the judicial officers 
of the State and even the governor, it would appear that these sums 
were regularly, systematically, and honestly repaid, but the admin- 
istration of this fund does not seem to have taken on a character 
essentially different from that in other States, for the financial 
administration of the fund came to be an end in itself and the schools 
disappear largely from view. 

This becomes distinctly visible when we come to consider the sums 
paid out of the fund for schools and the sums invested for the fund 
in bank stocks. Under the act of 1817 each of the counties was 
allowed $1,000 per year for poor children. All the sums allowed were 
not paid over to the counties and all that was paid over was not 
expended, but a part covered back into the fund. From 1817 and 
1818 the sums paid to the counties or to teachers for teaching poor 
children never amounted to as much as $1,000 per year until 1828-29, 
when it was $1,115.93, and this, too, although most of the time the 
annual income from marriage and tavern licenses and from bank 
stocks varied in amount from $2,131 in 1823 to $10,550 in 1826. 
And this failure to spend seems to have been due as much to the 
indifference to schools as to the usual desire to increase the fund. 
In 1827 no more than $432.89 was credited as expended for schools, 
and of this sum $160 was paid for Sunday schools. The law of 1821 
provided that the funds paid to Sunday schools should be raised by 
a general tax, as were other taxes. It is not clear how the $124 paid 
out in 1822 for Sunday schools 'and the $189 paid out in 1823 for the 
same purpose were raised. 

The total effect of the efforts from 1817 to 1821 to establish schools 
was either nil or bad. No workable scheme of education was evolved ; 

i See H. J., 1826, p. 12, and same 1827, p. 26. 
93106—17 3 



34 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 



no schools were permanently established; the spirit of educational 
endeavor was not brought into the State nor induced to make it an 
abiding place ; little or no interest in education was awakened among 
the masses; no friends for the system were raised up, and the delib- 
erate declaration that the income of the fund was for the teaching 
of paupers, deliberately and distinctly so declared, divided the popu- 
lation into the rich and the poor, empliasized and exaggerated social 
distinctions, aroused a spirit of independence which would have none 
of the education thus offered, and so made the whole attempt a 
dismal failure. During these dark years, when public school educa- 
tion was at its nadir in the State, the better system had apparently 
but one friend. His efforts for better things have been noticed 
already in connection with the messages of the governors in 1822 
and 1824, and in 1829 his ideas were finally crystallized into law. 
This friend of real public school education was Willard Hall, whose 
work will be considered with some detail in the next chapter. 

V. STATISTICAL SUMMARY OF THE SCHOOL FUND. 

All that had been really accomplished before 1829 may be given 
statistically in the following presentation of the fortunes of the school 
fund, 1796-1829: 

Statement of Delaware school fund, 1796-1829. 



Year. 


Authority for state- 
ment. 


Annual 
receipts, 
including 
dividends 

and 
excluding 
balances. 


Paid for 
public 
(poor) 

schools. 


Paid 
for 

Sunday 
schools. 


Estimated 

value of 

bank stock 

belonging 

to 

school 

fund. 


Tax valua- 
tion 
(hundreds 
omitted). 


1796-97 


H. J. 1798, 42-43 

H. J. 1799,21 


$3,523.53 
1,361.00 
2, 436. 54 
1, 802. 00 
672.00 
3, 290. 82 
2, 284. 00 
1,787.00 
3, 674. 09 
1, 792. 00 
2, 993. 00 
2,174.00 
5, 462. 95 
4, 359. 65 
7, 884. 00 
7,431.20 
9, 100. 75 

11, 210. 61 
7,655.20 
8, 568. 00 
9, 338. 25 

10, 470. 66 
8. 567. 88 






$3,523.53 




1798 








1799 


H.J. 1800,21-22 

H. J. 1801,24-25 

H. J. 1802, 14 








$8,857,000 
8, 837, 000 


1800 








1801 








8,502,000 
8,651,000 
8,819,000 
8,592,000 
8, 709, 000 


1802 


H. J. 1803, 16 








1803. 


H. J. 1804, 20-21 

H. J. 1805, 14 








1804. . 








1805 


H.J. 1806,16-17 

H. J. 1807, 5-6 






22,368.55 


1806 






8,792,000 
8,293,000 
.8,297,000 
8,228,000 


1807 


H. J. 1808, 22 




i 


1808. 


H. J. 1809, 18 






33,359.01 
39, 480. 72 
46, 403. 98 
58,893.37* 
57, 912. 85* 
68, 458. 29" 
75,213.84 
82, 714. 22 
91, 153. 70 
99, 131. 88 
91, 766. 27 
86, 678. 63 
94, 102. 82* 
114, 689. 78| 
119,788.84 
120,933.18* 
121, 922. 70*. 
121,264.07 
123, 768. 28 
144,721.09 
151,643.42 
158, 160. 15 


1809 


H. J. 1810, 35-36 

A. R. 1810, 32 






1810 






7,991,000 
8,009,000 
8,041,000 
7,936,000 


1811 


H. J. 1812,42-3 

A. R. 1812,35-36 

A. R. 1813,41-42 

A. R. 1814, 37 






1812 






1813 






1814 






8,073,000 
8,029,000 
8,611,000 
8, 686; 000 


1815.. . 


A. R. 1815,30-31 

A. R. 1816,32-33 

A. R. 1817,35-36 

A. R. 1818,37-39 

A. R. 1819,31-32 






1816 






1817 


$1, 250. 00 

2,250.00 

250.00 




1818.. . 




8,567,000 
8,63S,000 
8,696,000 
8, 726, 000 


1819.. . 




1820 


A. R. 1820, 234 1 7. 537. 25* 




1821 


A. R. 1821,252 

A. R. 1822,243-7. 

A. R. 1823,201-2 

A. R. 1824,282-3 

A. R. 1825,275-9 

A. R. 1826, 246-9 

A. R. 1829,245-7 

A. R. 1829,278-9 

A. R. 1830, 143-5 


8,081.94 
8, 185. 50 
2,131.00 
8, 761. 87 
7,345.00 

10,442.02 
9,321.34 
7,027.75 

10, 551. 48 


1822 


880. 22| 
376. 99 


1 $124. 00 
1 189.00 


8, 816, 000 


1823 


8,851,000 


1824 


8,924,000 


1825 


380. 76 
367. 03 
272. 89 




8,646,000 


1826 




8, 755, 000 


1827 

1828 


2 160.00 
3 414. 92 
3 357.32 


8,773,000 
13, 115, 718 


1829 


1, 115. 93 


13,262,000 







1 It is not clear whether these sums were paid from the school fund; apparently they were not. 

2 Charged as coming from the school fund ; but under New Castle and Sussex Counties there is reported 
a total of $206.49, which was apparently paid out of county funds. 

3 AppareDtly paid out of local funds. 



THE FIRST ATTEMPTS AT STATE EDUCATION. 35 

The investments and amount of the school fund in 1829 were as 
follows, as taken from the auditor's report for 1829: 1 

2,439 shares stock in Farmers' Bank, full paid in, at $50 per share $121, 950. 00 



Estimated value, at $45 per share 1 $109, 755. 00 109, 755. 00 

37 shares in Bank of Delaware, at $310 per share 11, 470. 00 11, 470. 00 

44 shares in United States Bank, at $123.25 per share. . . 5, 423. 00 
20 shares in United States Bank, at $122.87 per share.. 2, 457. 50 
1 share in United States Bank, at $123 per share 123. 00 

65 in all, estimated at 8, 003. 00 

Chesapeake and Delaware Canal stock, cost 21, 250. 00 21, 250. 00 

Balance cash on hand 6, 682. 15 

Cost price 162, 673. 50 

Market value 158, 160. 15 

1 Appendix to H. J. 1830, p. 144. These totals will be found not to foot up correctly, but they are copied 
as given in the auditor's report. 



Chapter III. 

THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS 



I. WILLARD HALL. 

There came to Delaware in 1803 a man who through a devotion 
of 50 years to the cause of education won for himself in that State 
the loving title of father of the public schools. This man was Willard 
Hall (1780-1875), a native of Massachusetts, a Harvard graduate in 
the class of 1799, a lawyer by profession. He served as secretary of 
state of Delaware 1811-1814; was elected to Congress in 1816 and 
1818, and was again secretary of state in 1821. In 1822 he was a 
member of the State senate, where his influence in behalf of educa- 
tion was already beginning to be manifest. As has been shown in 
an earlier chapter, he was the responsible person behind the educa- 
tional recommendations contained in Gov. Collins 's message of that 
year, and from that time on there was no let-up in his enthusiasm 
for the schools. In May, 1823, he was appointed by President 
Monroe judge of the Federal District Court of Delaware, a position 
which he filled with fidelity for 48 years. His elevation to the bench 
brought Judge Hall relief from the harassing details of his profession 
and gave him much leisure for maturing and developing those larger 
plans of usefulness upon which he had already begun to meditate, 
and it is even doubtful whether these unofficial and purely voluntary 
services, though less conspicuous, were not more valuable and far- 
reaching in their influence than his judicial duties. 

Of his interest in the schools of the State his biographer says : 1 

It is very far from an adequate estimate of the services of Judge Hall to the cause 
of popular education in this State to regard him only as the founder or organizer of 
the school system. That was but the commencement of his labors. Not content 
only to frame and inaugurate the system, he watched its operations with ceaseless 
vigilance, encouraging effort, conciliating honest dissent, shaming selfish cavils and 
narrow prejudices, studying to the utmost detail the practical working of the system, 
seeking legislation to remedy its defects and to improve its efficiency. He was the 
ever-ready adviser of school commissioners and teachers, even in the selection of 
school books and the adoption of the best methods of instruction. His care of the 
schools was paternal. The father of a family does not with more solicitude and watch- 
fulness provide for the education of his children. In New Castle County, where his 
personal influence was more direct and operative, he organized an annual school con- 
vention, in which delegates from the districts met and discussed the interests of the 

1 For a sketch of Judge Hall's life, see the memorial address delivered by Hon. Daniel M. Bates before 
the Delaware Historical Society in 1876. (Wilmington, 1879.) 

36 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 37 

schools, and reports were made of their progress. These reports he examined in their 
minutest details, classified their results, and published them in pamphlet form with 
"the proceedings of the convention, and with his own observations upon the then pres- 
ent condition and necessities of the schools. These pamphlets he took means to cir- 
culate in all the districts from year to year, as a means of diffusing information and 
quickening interest in the subject. The office of superintendent of the public schools 
for New Castle County, which during all these years he held under a commission of 
the governor, was hardly more than an honorary appointment, being without emolu- 
ment or any defined duties. It was not needful either to quicken his interest in the 
schools or to add to the weight of his personal influence on all questions touching 
their welfare. 

It will be found on examination that the praise quoted above, 
although often extravagant and inaccurate and without an intimate 
knowledge of what public education really stands for, as will be 
clearly evident to one who studies this biography in the light of the 
public-school development from 1829 to 1861, can hardly be called 
either excessive or undeserved. This is because Judge Hall, al- 
though conservative and steadily advocating an idea in school admin- 
istration which has long since been shown to be unworkable, was 
the one man in Delaware who kept the public-school idea constantly 
before the minds of the people, and so made the evolution of a better 
system possible. 

Of Judge Hall's share in securing the school law of 1829 Mr. Bates 
says further in his memorial address (p. 33): 

In 1822 Judge Hall became again the secretary of state. * * * The secretary 
then took up the interests of popular education in this State with a grasp which 
relaxed only after 50 years of labor and under the infirmities of great age. It became, 
thenceforth, truly his life work. He matured, and the governor, by message to the 
general assembly, presented, and with great force of reasoning recommended, what in 
principle and outline became, and still remains [written in 1876], the school system 
of this State. The scheme proposed the division of the counties into school districts, 
with legal authority in the qualified voters of each to establish and maintain free 
schools; each district to receive a fair distributive share of the income of the school 
fund, upon the condition of its raising, additionally, a sum adequate, with the divi- 
dend from the school fund, to maintain a school. The scheme, as explained and 
enforced by the governor's message, so far harmonized conflicting opinions as to prom- 
ise a practical solution of the long- vexed question, how to make the school fund avail- 
able; and so, at a subsequent session of the legislature, Judge Hall was requested to 
mature the plan in further detail and to embody it in a statute. The result was the 
school law of 1829. Since that time the system has been, of course, revised, modified 
in details, adjusted in some points to the results of experience; and, as it is to be hoped, 
its efficiency has been much improved by the act of the last general assembly [that 
of 1875], providing for a State superintendent and board of control, with power to 
supervise the methods of instruction, and to raise the standard of the qualification 
of teachers. But in its essential principles and general framework the system of 
1 829, devised by Judge Hall, remains, after a trial of now half a century, well approved 
by experience and by the public judgment. 

From this address it appears that the main idea in Gov. Collins's 
proposed scheme of 1822 — a cooperation of the community and the 
State in the organization of the school — was Hall's idea. Indeed, 



38 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

lie actually drew up at that time a general law for the encouragement 
of free schools. This plan met with the approval of the governor, 
but failed of enactment into law for he was ahead of the legislature 
and must abide his time. The State was coming slowly to realize, 
however, that the idea contained in the laws of 1817, 1818, and 1821 
was a failure, and that the school system would have to be redrawn 
on a broader and more liberal basis. As this failure became more 
and more apparent, the demand for a better act became more in- 
sistent, and in 1829 the proposals of Judge Hall received the sanction 
of the assembly. This brings the subject chronologically down to 
an examination of the educational act of 1829. 

II. THE FREE-SCHOOL ACT OF 1829 AND ITS LATER AMENDMENTS, 

1830-1860. 

In his message to the assembly in 1829, Gov. Charles Polk intro- 
duces the subject of education by saying: 

To the diffusion of intelligence through the medium of common schools all profess 
to be friendly; and the subject has so long furnished a standing theme of speculation 
among us that it has lost the interest of novelty, yielding little but trite observations 
to the truth of which every one gives a ready assent, yet it can not be said that we have 
ever realized the benefit of a single practical effort to establish a general system of 
education throughout the State. 

Gov. Polk then enters into an estimate of the yearly value of the 
income from the school fund and shows that this income was insuf- 
ficient to support a school system, for it never entered "into the 
imagination of those who established it" that jthe fund — 

would ever accomplish that design without the subsidiary efforts of the people among 
whom it might be distributed. * * * Donations and bequests to the State appear 
to have been anticipated by the framers of the act, and in this they have been disap- 
pointed. * * * Any plan that can be devised by which the business of improving 
the education and morals of our people shall be reduced to a permanent system through- 
out the State "will be a public blessing. We have been so long without any that some 
who were once advocates of the appropriation of the fund for the establishment of 
schools, in despair of ever arriving at a succeosful system, have been willing to divert 
it from its legitimate purpose. 1 

The committee to whom the educational sections of the governor's 
message were referred floundered worse than the governor himself; 
they asked for more time and that they be instructed to invite Judge 
Hall to draw up a bill. 2 They were against schools that were free 
to all in the modern sense, because "that which costs us nothing we 
esteem lightly; this is a law of our nature founded in wisdom." 
Another argument against such a system was the failure under the 
acts of 1817, 1818, and 1821. Says the author of the report: 

I had conversation with two of the trustees, to whom, when in former years appro- 
priations were made of part of the income of this fund, money was committed to pro- 

i H. J., 1829, pp. 8-10. * H. J., 1829, p. 40. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 39 

vide schools for poor children ; and the information of both was, that they pro vided the 
schools, but that they could not persuade the children to attend. One (and he was a 
respectable man) informed me that he went round to the parents; but they appeared 
indifferent to the matter. There must therefore be some system differing from one of 
entire gratuity. 

And on the writer of that report it never once dawned that this 
indifference was not due to the gratuity itself, but to the way it was 
given; not that schools were free, but that those who accepted their 
privileges should take at the same time the brand of pauperism. To 
the sturdy, defiant, unbending, and independent manhood of Dela- 
ware is alone due our thanks that the State was saved from the 
imposition of a pauper system with its horizontal division of the 
people into two classes — the upper class who could educate them- 
selves and the paupers who were to be educated by the State not 
as a right but as a gratuity. No wonder the committee could truth- 
fully say in their report that "education is not now an object of so 
general attention in this State as it was 20 years ago. There is less 
care for schools." The agitation and promotion of the pauper idea 
had done its perfect work. 1 

Along with this report of the committee was presented Judge Hall's 
draft of a bill for a system of public education which became the "Act 
for the establishment of free schools," of which a summary follows. 2 

The chief characteristics of the law of 1829 are as follows: 

The levy court appointed five commissioners in each county to divide it into school 
districts. In making the division "it shall be a general regulation to form each 
district so that the most remote parts shall be 2 miles, or about that distance, from 
the center," but districts comprehending a town might "be of such dimensions as 
shall be deemed just, having respect to the population." The commissioners were 
to ascertain the number of schools in operation, the number of scholars taught therein, 
the several sums paid to the teachers, and to form an estimate of the number of chil- 
dren in each district between 5 and 21 years of age. The commissioners of each 
county were to form a board, with authority to review their proceedings as commis- 
sioners and to alter or form the bounds of any district. 

The school voters in each district were privileged to hold a stated meeting every 
year, on the second Monday of October, at the schoolhouse, or any place designated 
by the levy court, to elect, by ballot, a clerk and two commissioners of the district. 
They were to determine in the same manner how much money was to be raised "by 
subscription or voluntary contribution" for procuring or maintaining a schoolhouse, 
or for "the support of a free school" in the district. Every resident in the district 
having a right to vote for representatives in the general assembly was also a school 
voter of said district. 3 Occasional meetings might also be held. 

Duties of the district clerk and commissioners: (1) To determine a situation and 
erect a school building thereon; (2) to keep the building in good repair; (3) to provide 
a school for as long a time as the funds would admit; (4) to receive all moneys and 
apply the same; (5) to employ teachers; (6) to do all acts requisite to the maintenance 
of a school. 

i H. J., 1829, pp. 123-125. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1829, pp. 184-197. See also a discussion on the bill in H. J., 1829, pp. 173-175. 

3 The committee were elected for one year until in 1867 their term was extended to three years. 



40 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

They were to employ as a teacher no person whom they did not have just grounds 
to believe to be of good moral character and well qualified to teach reading, writing, 
arithmetic, and English grammar, and such other branches of knowledge as the 
committee might deem necessary to be taught in the district. They might employ 
a female teacher (in respect to whom the qualification of reading and writing might 
be sufficient) in the summer months or other parts of the year when small children 
could attend school and others were engaged in the common occupations of the 
country. They might dismiss a teacher. 

The clear income of the school fund thereafter to accrue was to be apportioned 
and appropriated among the three counties, one-third to each. One of these equal 
parts was then to be divided ' ' among the school districts in such county, to each an 
equal share. " Each district, however, should have from the school fund an amount 
equal to that resolved to be raised by the voters, and no greater. The auditor was to 
settle the accounts of the school committees, who were to appear before him when- 
ever he attended "in their county to settle the account of the county treasurer," 
and failure to meet their part of the agreement meant forfeiture of their claims to a 
part of the funds for the next year. 

Each school was to be opened on the first Monday in November and to continue 
as long as funds permitted. It was free to all white children. The school committee 
was to make regulations for the government of the school and was to " provide for the 
expulsion of a scholar for obstinate misbehavior. " 

Each school was made a corporation by the name of school district No. — , with 
the usual corporate powers. 

The governor was directed to appoint, on or before the first Monday in March, a 
superintendent of free schools in each county for one year. The duties of the super- 
intendent were : (1) To correspond with all persons interested in the execution of 
the act; (2) to aid in all matters connected with its execution; (3) to supply school 
districts with proper forms and to advise them in respect to their proceedings; (4) 
to see that notice be given of division of districts; (5) to collect information and report 
to the general assembly. For his services he was to receive no compensation but 
the payment of all expenses incurred in the performance of his duties. The earlier 
laws on the subject were repealed. 

Judge Hall seemed himself evidently much pleased with the law. 
His estimate of it is quoted by Powell (p. 144): 

The school system under these laws is simple and plain. It forms school districts, 
appoints and regulates the meeting of the school voters in these districts, and commits 
to these voters in these meetings the whole power over the subject of common schools 
for their districts. Every school district is a republican community for the special 
purpose of taking care of the interests of popular education within its bounds. It 
depends upon the school voters whether the children of the district shall have the 
benefit of a school and what kind of a school they shall have. 

The import of the law appears in another quotation from Judge 
Hall: 

The design of the system is not to make schools by its operation, but to enable and 
invite the people to make schools by their own agency. 

The term "free" was applied to the school law to indicate two facts: First, that 
the people were left free to choose the length of time their schools should be in oper- 
ation during any one year, and the amount of money to be raised by taxation for the 
support of the same thus placing upon the people themselves, voting in the school 
meetings, the power and responsibility of determining whether they would have a 
good school, an inferior one, or no school; second, making the title show that the 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 41 

schools in the State were free for every white child to attend without reference to any 
money having been paid by its father or guardian. 1 

The free school law of 1829 was soon subjected to numerous 
amendments. These began in 1830 and were followed by others in 
1832, 1833, 1835, and 1837, but all after those of 1830 were of rela- 
tively slight importance. Those for 1830 were of great significance, 
for they gave to the school districts the authority to raise by local 
taxation such part of the required supplement to the school fund 
as a majority of the voters of the district might deem proper. 2 
It provided also that any district which raised one-half of the dis- 
tributive share to which it was entitled from the school fund should 
be allowed to draw the whole of the share due from the fund. This 
amendment cut the requirement set up by the act of 1829 in half. 
It also extended the time limit within which certain things could 
be done; neglect of the levy court to perform certain duties was not 
to count against the district; the number of commissioners was 
changed; and balances were made available for three years instead 
of going back into the county treasury at the end of each year. It 
was also made the duty of the school committee of the school district 
1 ' to make an assessment list for their respective district. " The assess- 
ment lists were to consist — 

of the rates of persons of all the white male inhabitants of the district of the age of 
21 years or upward, of the valuations of the personal property of all the white inhabi- 
tants of the district, and of the clear rental value 3 of all the real estate within the dis- 
trict. 

No tax was to be levied, however, without the express consent of 
a majority of the taxpayers, and in no case was more than $300 to 
be raised in any district. 4 

There was at once uncertainty as to the proper interpretation of 
this amendment. To the assembly of 1832 Judge Hall addressed a 
communication as superintendent of New Castle County in which, 
after praising extravagantly the democracy of the law of 1830, he 
asks that it be amended to the extent of providing clearly that the 
matter of district school taxation should be settled by a majority of 
the votes cast at the designated election instead of requiring a ma- 
jority of the voters of the school district. 5 

i Groves, J. H.: History of Free Schools of Delaware, in An. Rep. Supt. Free Schools of Del., for 1880; 
also quoted by Powell, p. 144. These quotations seem to be from an address by Judge Hall issued for circu- 
lation among the people of the State soon after the passage of the act of 1829. (See Rep. Com'r Educ, 1871, 
p. 109.) 

2 In a private letter written by Willard Hall in June, 1843, to Henry Barnard and now preserved in the 
Bureau of Education it is said: " About 1819 a law was drafted for establishing a system of common schools 
in the State, raising by taxation what should be required over the supply from the school fund. The draft 
was published by order of the legislature for the information of the people; it was abandoned. " This may 
explain why the idea of taxation was left out of the act of 1829. Indeed, in this same letter Judge Hall says 
that "the power of taxation was stricken out." 

3 It is of interest in this connection to consider the objections to the proposed school law, made by the 
legislative committee in behalf of the landowners in 1824. See ante, p. 32. This "clear rental value" was 
not finally repealed till 1917. 

* Laws of Delaware, 1830, ch. 21, pp. 21-24. 
6 See his report in S. J., 1832, pp. 31-37. 



4 2 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

In 1832 also certain school committees were given more time in 
which to settle their accounts and the penalty for neglect was sus- 
pended. 1 In 1833 there was a redistribution of the clear income of 
the school fund "according to the aggregate number of white popu- 
lation, respectively/' 2 and the shares thus received in the counties 
were to be divided " among the several districts thereof, share and 
share alike." 3 By another act two. or more districts were permitted 
to unite and support a free school for the common benefit. 4 

In 1837 two acts of importance were passed. One of these admitted 
women to the schools as teachers on the same terms as men, 5 while 
the other shows clearly how the educational wind was blowing in 
Delaware. Under the act of 1829 each of the local districts had been 
required to raise a sum equal to that to which it was entitled from 
the school fund; the amendment of 1830 reduced this requirement 
by one-half. The law of 1837 6 cut this total requirement to the beg- 
garly sum of $25 per district, and Judge Hall tells us that|this was 
sometimes raised by the patrons delivering 25 loads of wood at the 
schoolhouse at $1 per load, while some of the more enterprising dis- 
tricts paid their teacher $50, but took from him a receipt for $75 and 
counted the difference as $25 " raised." 

By 1837 the amendments of most significance had been made to 
the law of 1829. 

From 1837 to 1861 there was much school legislation, but most of 
of it was purely local, for prior to 1857 no new school district could 
be created without special sanction of the general assembly, and the 
laws for this period are full of this special legislation. 7 

Occasionally, from 1851, acts looking toward the^relief of a par- 
ticular situation begin to appear. Thus in 1851 United^School Dis- 
trict Nos. 23 and 75 in New Castle County was allowed ?to;*exceed 
the $300 limit fixed by the act of 1830 and to raise ; $l,000 by taxa- 
tion "in the same manner as school districts are authorized by law 
to levy and raise taxes." In this case the principle of|the|tax was 
not involved, but the amount. 8 

In 1852 District No. 9 of New Castle County, which hadjrecently 
become a part of the Wilmington public school system, and one of 
the districts of Kent County, received similar authority to raise $500, 9 

i Laws of Delaware, 1832, ch. 170, pp. 171-72. 

2 The earlier distribution had been in equal proportion to the counties without regard to the number of 
districts in each. This had caused dissatisfaction in New Castle and Sussex. See governor's message in 
S. J., 1832, p. 10. 

3 Laws of Delaware, 1833, ch. 244, pp. 240-41. 

* Ibid., 1833, ch. 269, pp. 277-79. See also ch. 21, acts of 1830. 
5 Laws of Delaware, 1837, ch. 79, pp. 81-2. 
«Ibid, ch. 138, pp. 176-77. 

' See for example the laws of 1847, chs. 158, 167, 198, 212; and in 1849, chs. 297, 315. 325, 335, 351, 3o4, 375, 
413, etc. 
s Laws of Delaware, 1851, ch. 486. 
a Laws of Delaware, 1852, chs. 638, 676; 1857, ch. 419; 1859, ch. 552. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 43 

and from this time on there appears a tendency, more or less distinct, 
toward allowing the more progressive districts to thus provide for 
their wants over and above the bare necessities. An act of 1857 pro- 
vided also that new districts might be created by action of the levy 
court of the county, the only limitation on their power being appar- 
ently the requirement that the new district should contain at least 
35 children over 5. When created the new district became under the 
force of the same act an equal participant with the older districts, 
whether " original or subdivided/' in the benefits of the school fund 
of the county. 1 But this provision for local action did not put a 
period to the creation of school districts by special legislation, 2 and 
there is little in the laws of more than local educational significance 
from the acts of 1829, 1830, and 183 7 until the passage of the act of 1861. 
That there were some good provisions in the original law of 1829 
does not admit of doubt; that it was a vast improvement over the 
earlier attempts of 1817, 1818, and 1821 is evident, for it abandoned 
whole-heartedly and forever the idea that public education was to 
be a pauper affair. Had Judge Hall' accomplished nothing else edu- 
cational in character, he would still deserve gratitude for wiping those 
disgraceful acts from the statute books of the State and erasing them 
from the minds of the people. The law of 1829 swept the table clean 
of the trash that had littered it and healed the sore which was injur- 
ing the cause of education, but when the turn is made from the nega- 
tive to the positive features of the act there is less to be said in its 
favor. True, it was a great step in advance, when compared with 
the laws that it superseded, but it stood for little actual progress in 
itself. It declared all the schools to be free to all white children; it 
provided for county superintendents of education, but without salary, 
and for a community of interests between the school district and the 
local school fund; it made aid from the fund depend on self-help — 
they were to receive as much as they gave — but it left them free to 
give or not to give, to have a good school, a poor school, or no school 
at all, and to this failure no penalty was attached save the loss of 
their share of the fund and their own increasing ignorance. For one 
of these penalties unfortunately they did not care, and the other 
they could not realize. Under this law no tax was levied by the 
-State nor by any smaller unit except the school district; no require- 
ment was placed by the State nor by any smaller unit on the indi- 
vidual citizen. The law was simply permissive and only pointed 
out how each district might become a partaker of the common fund. 
Under a strong, intelligent, aggressive, and enthusiastic county 
superintendent much might be accomplished. Without such a 
leader little need be expected. 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1857, ch. 442. The requirement of 35 pupils in the district was a general one appa- 
rently and was renewed from year to year. See, for instance, ch. 296, passed Mar. 13, 1863. 

2 Ihid., 1857, chs. 456, 457, 470, 474; 1859, chs. 532, 565, 594, 666. 



44 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

This is exactly what happened. The history of public school 
education in Delaware for tl\e next 30 years is mainly the history of 
effort to arouse interest in the local school districts, to provide enough 
local funds, first by subscription and contribution and later by 
taxation also (permitted in 1830) to meet the requirements for 
securing their proportion of the interest of the school fund. This 
effort generally developed into a struggle to secure a tax or to retain 
the tax already secured; it was renewed annually and with varying 
fortune, except that the invariable result was that when the tax 
question was annually settled little energy remained for school 
administration, and the schools were left to run themselves while 
their supporters recuperated their energies in anticipation of the 
next annual struggle over the question of local taxation. 

This phase of public school education in Delaware was properly 
if not attractively characterized by Supt. Groves when he said : * 

Irresponsible and ignorant voters, together with men who had no direct interest in 
education, labored strenuously year after year in the annual meetings to vote down 
tax, by so doing to deprive the community of both the aid of the State and assessable 
property within the districts. Even the poor man, who represented in many cases 
a large family of children, whom a public or free school law especially benefited, was 
found voting against tax — voting away money that was lawfully placed within his 
reach, which would give to his offspring means for future support and happiness. 
Men interested in the prosperity of the State and the education of the rising genera- 
tion petitioned legislature after legislature to change this feature of the law. 

But no change in this section was possible until 1861. 

III. THE EDUCATIONAL CONVENTIONS OF NEW CASTLE COUNTY, 1836- 
1855; THE GROWTH IN DEMAND FOR CENTRALIZATION. 

Perhaps the one idea which stands out most prominently in the 
educational history of Delaware between 1829 and 1861 is the reali- 
zation of a growing necessity for greater centralization and the long- 
continued struggle against the inevitable in attaining that end. In 
the following section that fact comes repeatedly to the front. 

In 1830 the governor reported that school districts had been set 
off in Sussex and Kent. Amendments of that year provided for 
similar action in New Castle. County superintendents were ap- 
pointed, but the office was an unpaid one. It required considerable 
knowledge of educational matters and much devotion to the cause 
of the people. It is perhaps safe to say that the success or failure 
of the schools depended entirely on the personality of the county 
superintendent. Without these extraordinary qualifications the 
system was foredoomed to failure. 

It was reported that in 1833 more than 133 districts had been 
organized and were receiving aid from the fund. Of these schools 
61 were in New Castle County, 36 in Kent, and 36 in Sussex, 2 but as 

> History of the Free Schools of Delaware, in An. Rep. Supt. Free Schools of Delaware, 1880, p. 49. 
2 Powell, L. P.; Hist, of Ed. in Delaware, p. 145. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 45 

laws already quoted would indicate, the funds available were not 
sufficient, there was already hostility to the voting of taxes, and the 
schools began to decline. In 1835 Gov. C. P. Bennett saw the defects 
in the law and in his message to the assembly declared: 

A system of education prescribing the mode is as necessary to the success of this, 
the most important institution of a free government, as the series of laws by which 
its creation is authorized, * * * the vitality of the principles of our Government 
depends upon the diffusion of knowledge. * * * The system of education there- 
fore ought to be graduated in strict conformity with this material characteristic. 

He then adverts to the Prussian system, praises and commends 
some of its characteristics, and while declaring that "as a system" 
it was " entirely unsuited to our habits and opinions" thought that 
"in many of its details it would be found applicable to our situation 
and views; and some of its formulae might be adopted as models 
whereon a portion of our less comprehensive system might be 
molded." 1 

The committee of the house to whom this part of the message was 
referred made a long report in which they declared that the people 
had taken but little interest in the education of their children and 
that the schools were retrograding when the present law was enacted ; 
they reviewed the objections to the system of taxation then in fo/ce 
for the use of schools and suggested that some of these might be 
removed by changing the tax value of land from the rental value 
basis to the gross value, basis. They reported 127 schools in the 193 
districts. 2 

In this year also there was a proposition to give to the school fund 
the sum of $25,000, being one-fourth of the sum which was to be 
raised by lottery for the use of the Delaware State College. 3 

In 1836 comes the first of the series of annual educational conven- 
tions held in and for New Castle County and in which Judge Hall 
was leader and guiding spirit. The printed reports of these con- 
ventions are the principal sources of information which we have of 
the progress of the free schools in Delaware for the 25 years from the 
passage of the law in 1829 to the suspension of the conventions in 
1855. The accounts as given in their journals are incomplete, frag- 
mentary, not uniform, and do not cover the whole State, yet they 
are the best available picture of the educational life of the State as a 
whole, as they show the needs and the difficulties of the system and 
suggest the methods of thought of the people. 

The first of these annual conventions met in Wilmington on 
December 15, 1836. Forty-eight districts were represented by 123 

i H. J., 1835, p. 10. 

2 H. J., 1835, pp. 65-70. 

s See Laws of Delaware, 1835, ch. 362, pp. 355-357. Between 1836 and 1851 the Delaware College lottery- 
yielded "to the State" the sum of $13,206.90, according to Gov. Tharp's message in 1851, but there is no 
statement of the part that went to schools, if any. (See H. J., 1851, p. 7.) 



46 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

delegates; Judge Hall was its chief promoter and became its presi- 
dent, as he did of most of its successors. The convention, first of all, 
insisted on the greater centralization of power; then it asked the 
general assembly to accept the State's share of the surplus revenue 
and to apply the income to public education. They appointed a 
committee to wait on the assembly; and the act of February 22, 
1837, by which the larger part of the income from this fund was made 
available for the public schools, was the result. 1 Thus at its first 
session the New Castle County school convention began to promote 
the cause of public education, and, although often halting and feeble 
in its efforts and frequently divided in its councils, continued for 20 
years to make its contribution to the educational advance of the 
State. 

The report for 1837 shows some of the characteristics of a modern 
educational meeting, and, while nominally composed of delegates 
from New Castle County only, was to a limited extent a representa- 
tive convention of the educational interests of the whole State. 
Various matters of local and general, of temporary and permanent, 
interest were discussed, including textbooks, the method of raising 
money for the schools, the question of a normal school for the train- 
ing of common-school teachers, school libraries, and school journals. 
A report on the uniformity of textbooks declared it to be " a decided 
advantage," and a uniform series was recommended: AngelTs series 
of spelling and reading books, No. 1 to No. 6; Emerson's arithmetic, 
parts 1, 2, and 3; Smith's geography and atlas; Smith's grammar; 
Olney's History of the United States. 

In the matter of taxation the committee were of the opinion that 
the best way was through a tax levied according to the existing pro- 
visions of the free-school laws and collected by the regular collectors 
of the hundreds and not by special collectors as was then the fashion. 
It was said in some districts that the plan of taxation was very un- 
popular; that it was at times difficult or impossible to get collectors 
to do the work, and that collection then devolved on the school 
committee. 

In 1837 reports, oral or written, were received from 46 districts in 
New Castle County. In 3 of these no school had been established; 
about one-half of the others had been in operation seven years or 
since the adoption of the system; the other half were mostly insti- 
tuted three or four years since ; some were open all the year, but the 
greater part from 6 to 10 months only. In a considerable number of 
the districts schoolhouses had been erected. In 33 schools the whole 
number of pupils averaged 1,400, the largest numbering 200; in 3 or 4 

1 Barnard's Journal of Education for 1866, vol. 16, p. 369. No copy of the original edition of the journal 
of 1836 has been seen. There was a reprint issued in 1850 in the form of a broadside. A copy of this reprint 
is in the Bureau of Education. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 47 

of the largest the sexes were taught separately. In a few the " mathe- 
matics and some of the higher branches of an English education are 
taught. But in the greater number, the rudiments only are at- 
tended to." 

In 1837 also the school fund was increased by assigning to it a part 
of the income from the surplus revenue. Delaware's share of this 
fund was $286,751.49. Of this sum $265,793.83 was invested for the 
benefit of the school fund. The balance, $20,957.66, passed into the 
treasury. 1 From an act passed February 22, 1837, it appears that 
the State had subscribed for 5,000 shares in the capital stock of the 
Farmer's Bank of the State of Delaware. It paid for them with this 
surplus revenue fund. The interest from this stock and the interest 
from the other money loaned by the State (except that loaned to 
Sussex County) was to be divided into three parts, one-third to each 
county. New Castle was to use it for schools, Kent for schools or for 
any other purposes, and in Sussex one-third went for schools and the 
other two-thirds for the poor. 2 

At the meeting held in 1838 the proposal to increase the school 
fund through the use of a lottery was discussed and condemned, and 
Judge Willard Hall made a long report against the establishment of 
a normal school for the training of common-school teachers. This 
report is of particular interest for the reason that it is so very differ- 
ent in form, thought, and content from the opinion of to-day. It ' 
should be remembered, however, that Judge Hall was not an edu- 
cator, but a lawyer and Federal judge. He begins by pointing out 
that the pupil was often prevented from employing his time profit- 
ably by inability to secure a suitable teacher. Shall a school for the 
instruction of such teachers be established? Judge Hall answers, 
"No." 

The notion held up is that the teacher is not simply to learn what is to be taught, 
but he is to learn also the art of teaching. In my opinion, this is a metaphysical 
affectation. The art of teaching lies in the heart. If a man sets his heart upon teach- 
ing, either from a principle of duty or delight in the employment, he will teach well 
all he knows. A man who proceeds upon what he professes to be principles of sci- 
ence, apart from this cooperation of the heart in communicating knowledge, will rest 
on his formalities; and the coldness and barrenness of death will rest there with him. 
A man whose heart glows with delight in communicating instruction probably will 
adopt some peculiar manner, and his astonishing success will be ascribed to his man- 
ner. Another with no heart in the business will coldly go over this manner and find 
no success. As we do not want children to be educated to be school-teachers, but to 

i H. J., 1851, p. 7. 

2 See Delaware session laws, 1837; also eh. 27, acts of 1839. In his History of Federal and State Aid to 
Higher Education, Blackmar makes the general statement that the fund in Delaware went for "education." 
The above seems to have been the more exact division, but Gov. Tharp said in 1851 that according to the 
legislative report in January, 1840, of the interest and dividends apportioned "chiefly for the benefit of the 
school districts" the sum of $11,752.76 was not distributed to the schools, but was carried to the treasury, 
"nor does it appear that this sum was ever restored to the school fund." (H. J. 1851, pp. 7-8.) Later the 
fund so increased that Gov. Temple could say in 1847 that the State was distributing $28,500 among 185 
districts and 11,350 pupils, or about S2.50 to each. (See S. J., 1847, p. 21.) 



48 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 



be prepared for any station or employment to which they may be called, the correct 
course would seem to be to commit them to the instruction of those who have been 
so educated. To my mind the argument appears conclusive against the need of any 
such school. 

Judge Hall argued that there were three additional objections to 
the establishment of a normal school: (1) The first objection arose 
out of what he considered "an axiom in the concerns of freemen, 
that men should be left to their own inclinations and judgments, to 
what they may deem their interest, their duty, and their fitness in 
respect to their occupation"; (2) as soon as the system came into 
full operation the " school-teachers, being educated for their particu- 
lar employment, would form a body of men animated by a common 
spirit." This esprit du corps, this class consciousness, would give 
them a fearful power, as was the case with the Jesuits; (3) the in- 
creased cost, because the better educated the teachers the more pay 
they could command. 1 

He argued, further, that teachers should not remain long in the 
profession : 

I have long been fixed in the opinion that a few years only of the freshness of youth 
ought to be devoted to school teaching. In no other way will the best of our young 
men become teachers. They must look forward to something better. There are cases 
in which persons with particular aptitude to teach and particular fondness for teach- 
ing continue good teachers till old age; but they are rare. It is the result of my obser- 
vation that those who teach long lose the power of usefulness. Their tempers are 
spoiled; they disgust their scholars; they get into a beaten track; they can make no 
improvement. The fervor and studiousness to excel, natural to youth and a new 
employment, being spent, give place to the weariness of a dull irksome round. 

Judge Hall adds to his report some statistics on the general edu- 
cational situation in Delaware : 

Illiteracy in Delaware in 1838. 





New 
Castle. 


Kent. 


Sussex. 


White adults can read 


8,545 
372 

1,132 
179 

1,029 

3,262 


5,227 

1,578 

912 

488 

327 

3,205 


7,695 
2,621 
1,303 
1,138 


White adults can not read 


White children, 10 to 15, can read 


White children, 10 to 15, can not read 


White children under 10 can read 


385 


White children under 10 can not read 


5,376 





At this time, also, efforts were made to procure libraries, to form 
lyceums, and to circulate educational periodicals. Committees were 
appointed to examine and visit teachers, and efforts were made to 
secure the creation of a board of examiners in each hundred. The 
main source of trouble for the schools, however, was the method of 
raising the necessary funds. The levy of the tax was often defeated 
at the polls, and then of necessity resort was had to private contri- 

1 See a modern article advocating substantially the same view of the normal school in the Unpopular 
Review, January-March, 1916, V., 64-65. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 49 

butions. There was a growing conviction that the only effectual 
way of putting an end to the apathy which was throttling the system — 

would be the passage of a law making it obligatory on each district to support a school 
for a specified number of months in the year — and that by the tax system — the propor- 
tion and amount to be adjusted according to the present law, and then handed over 
to the proper person to be collected with the other taxes of the hundreds (1839). 

Another trouble of all these years was with the loose organization 
of the school system — if there can be said to have been any organiza- 
tion at this time. There was no general mandatory law. The whole 
idea of public education was bottomed on absolute democracy. 
Every school district had the absolute power of saying whether it 
should have a good school, a poor school, or no school, and there was 
no one to say them nay. And yet this extreme democracy had held 
up before its eyes the horrors of the centralized system of Prussia. 
So fearful were they of falling into the Scylla of Prussian centraliza- 
tion that they actually steered into the jaws of the Charybdis of 
decentr aliz ation . 

In 1839 there was a discussion, in particular, of the ways and 
means to secure libraries for the various schools. It was recom- 
mended that the American School Library, published in 50 volumes 
by the American Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and 
costing, together with a suitable case, the sum of $25, be put into 
all of the schools. Lyceum lectures for school communities were 
sometimes provided and occasionally museum facilities. 

In addition to the troublesome question of the school tax was that 
of the supply of teachers. The number of well-qualified teachers 
was always less than the demand. To meet the deficiency, " rather 
than be without a school, many districts have taken up with some 
strolling inebriate, well educated, perhaps, himself, but without 
moral principle and, of course, without industry or faithfulness in 
his calling." The committee reporting on this matter in 1839 did 
not agree with Judge Hall's report of the year before. 

Your committee fear that many years must elapse before an adequate number of 
competent instructors can be found. They do not now exist; they must be created 
by special efforts for that purpose. Male and female seminaries must be established 
or fostered by the State, for the express purpose of multiplying teachers, or the cause 
of education will languish and be behind the age. 

The pay of teachers will explain their fewness. One district paid 
out $900 and another $600 for teaching, but the number of teachers 
is not given. The sums usually paid to teachers varied from $87.50 
to $67.50 per quarter. District 57 paid $350, but this was an excep- 
tional district : 

In this district there has not been a vote in opposition in three years. In the com- 
mencement of the free-school system there was discord; but the people by coming 
together and discussing the subject, became satisfied that it would be ruinous to 

93106—17 1 



y 



50 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

neglect the education of their children, and that the free-school system, if cordially 
supported, would afford them the best means for this important object. The people 
are harmonious, the children are well taught, the school nourishes. 

Ill 1840 the principal subjects of discussion were their perennial 
stand-bys. The collection of taxes in a way less offensive to the 
people was one. 1 It was proposed also to make school warrants 
receivable for taxes. The second matter for general consideration 
was the education of teachers. It was complained also that to this 
convention only 10 districts had reported. From a study of these 
reports it seems that the school year was, as a rule, broken into two 
terms: A winter term with a man teacher, when the big boys were 
mostly in attendance — this was usually the longest session and the 
best attended; there was a shorter session in the summer, with a 
woman as teacher. The scheme of studies in these one-teacher 
schools covered anything from primary subjects to and including 
mensuration, algebra, geometry, grammar, geography, astronomy 
and natural philosophy, botany, and composition. The average 
attendance was generally less than 50 per cent of the enrollment, 
and the length of term varied from a few weeks to 12 months. The 
usual pay of teachers was about $75 per quarter, and in some' cases 
women received more than men. 

In 1841 Gov. Comegys makes an appeal in his message to the 
assembly in behalf of the schools. 2 He says: 

That our system [of schools] has been the means of effecting the most incalculable 
benefits, I believe its greatest enemy will not presume to deny. In such of the dis- 
tricts as have been distinguished for vigor and unanimity in its promotion, it ha? 
answered the expectation of its friends. * * * But it has shared the fate of every- 
thing else which is valuable in society — it has been opposed and denounced; and at 
this moment there are many who would gladly see it razed from its foundation. Of 
some Utopian scheme, all profess to be the advocates, but many, who are apparently 
the loudest friends of a free school system, are decidedly hostile to any other than 
one supported exclusively by the school fund, without the aid of the people, and 
devoted entirely to the education of poor children. * * * The taint of pauper- 
ism * * * would be an invincible barrier to its success. * * * The mental 
culture of the youth, like every other matter of public utility, should properly be 
the business of the State. 

I do not wish it to be inferred * * * that I am insensible to the defects in the 
plan of instruction at present in operation. * * * The existing law provides 
annually for a superintendent in each county. As no compensation is given to the 
superintendents, it is difficult to secure the services of any one disposed to give the 
requisite attention to his duties. The consequence is that the State has no official 
information in regard to the progress of the schools or the operation of the system. 
As it is important that it should be furnished, annually, with a report, it has occurred 
to me that the office of superintendent, in each county, might properly be abolished, 

1 This cause of complaint was removed by the act of Jan. 29, 1841 (ch. 283, p. 315), which provided that 
the school tax might be collected by collectors of the district or by collectors of the hundreds who were 
appointed by the levy court or the court of appeals in each county, or by a special collector appointed by 
the school commissioners. 

2 Message of January, 1841, separately printed. Dover, 1841, pp. 4-7. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 51 

and a general superintendent for the whole State created. By appointing a compe- 
tent individual, giving him a reasonable salary, and imposing on him such duties as 
should naturally devolve on one intrusted with the general oversight of the whole 
machinery of public instruction, much good might result to the system, its move- 
ments be accelerated, and its advantages more widely diffused. As another means of 
improvement, I would recommend that higher qualifications on the part of teachers 
be required, and the business of examining and licensing them be confined to the 
superintendent alone. * * * It also would be a gratifying alteration * * * to 
prevent the high degree of excitement at the annual school elections. The bicker- 
ings and animosities, * * * the excitement grows out of the opposition of young 
men who have neither children nor education * * * an exemption of such per- 
sons, and of all persons whose assessment dees not exceed $300, from school taxa- 
tion, would remedy the existing evil. "Whether it would be advisable to repeal the 
provision authorizing a vote, and insert one directing the levying a tax as other taxes 
'are laid, I leave to you to determine. It is foreign from my intention, however, 
gentlemen, to recommend measures of doubtful expediency, or which would hazard 
the continuance of the system. 

The reader has noticed that in this plethora of words there are 
elements of strength and wisdom: A declaration in favor of a public 
school system; a recognition of the failure of the pauper school idea, 
but indications that that idea was still alive; a modest and cautious 
suggestion of the necessity for a State superintendent and of a State 
school tax. 

The truth of the matter seems to be that the people of Delaware 
had done nothing so long, had spent so many years under a highly 
decentralized system that they had practically ceased to think in 
the terms of any other system. The thing that terrified them most 
was centralization. It became a term to conjure with. Thus 
when Judge Hall thought it desirable to add a long exhortation to 
his edition of the school laws printed this same year (1841) in be- 
half of the care and encouragement of the public school system, he 
did not fail to put in a word of warning by pointing out the terrors 
of centralization as exemplified "in the much applauded system of 
the King of Prussia." 1 To warn against Prussian centralization in 
Delaware at that time was like warning against floods in the Sahara 
or icebergs on the equator. 

But even the centralized Prussian system was not without its 
advocates in Delaware, as against the system of perfect freedom 
then the law in the State. "Some persons complain of this system 
[the one in use] as defective; they say it wants power, and they in- 
sist upon applying to the legislature for more law," says Judge 
Hall, and he seems to have felt it his duty to oppose this idea, so 
that all power might be kept in hands as near as possible to the 
people and that every ascending officer be made correspondingly 
weaker than the one below. Judge Hall has been well called the 
founder of public schools in Delaware. This is true, but it should be 

i See School Laws of Delaware, Wilmington, 1841, pp. 31-44. 



52 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWAEE. 

added that he built on a foundation so narrow and so hedged in by 
limitations on the power of initiative that a strong State system 
was, under the conditions, impossible of development. Judge Hall is 
the father of the schools, but his fear of centralization condemned 
them to a field of restricted usefulness. He believed in education 
for all, but of the meaning of public schools as the term is under- 
stood to-day he had little conception. He was by far too much of a 
strict constructionist to found a State system. 

In January, 1841, Judge Hall, as superintendent of New Castle 
County, presented a formal report on the public schools to the gen- 
eral assembly. It is the only report of the sort which has come 
under the observation of the writer, and is not in reality a report at 
all, but a review of the school situation, an argument of the same kind 
as the preceding item and mainly against centralization. It is worth 
attention, for it gives some insight into the school situation in the 
State and also shows how its supporters regarded it. Judge Hall 
remarks that, as there was no legal requirement on school committees 
to make reports to county superintendents, none had been made. 
He felt the need of such and urged that the system be strengthened 
to the extent of giving superintendents the power to require such 
reports and to obtain information in such other ways as would 
enable them l ' to exhibit the true state of all the school districts 
within their county" and that a salary should be annexed to the 
office. But this did not to his mind mean centralization, for " there 
is error in looking to the system to do what the people must do. 
The design of the system is not to make schools by its operation, 
but to enable and invite the people to make schools by their own 
agency." The general assembly had exercised toward the common 
schools " enlightened liberality," and in no State, except Connecti- 
cut, was there u so generous public provision." "The school dis- 
tricts are organized to manage their own schools according to their 
own judgments." If the people neglect this opportunity, the gen- 
eral assembly can not assume it for them. The assembly might as 
well undertake to educate the children — 

without their g*:ing through the wearisome process of study and recitation, as to pro- 
vide a system of schools to work well without the care, and pains, and diligence of 
the people interested in them. The great need is to awaken the people on this sub- 
tect. 1 

Judge Hall, however, had made progress in the matter of taxation 
since he wrote the law of 1829. It will be recalled that there was no 
provision in that act for taxation for schools. He now referred to the 
discussion on the subject of such taxation which took place in the 
New Castle County convention in 1839 and declared u to deny 
taxation in a school system is to resolve upon the end without the 

i Printed as a supplement to his edition of the school laws of that year (Wilmington, 1841), pp. 45-55. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 53 

means." The suggested amendment was that the levy court should 
" assess a school tax upon the taxables of every school district, 
to be placed to the credit of the district, and paid over to its school 
committee." The amount of the tax was to be so regulated as to 
equal the dividend received by the district from the school fund the 
previous year, but the district was allowed the right to prescribe a 
larger sum. u The hundred assessors could be required to estimate 
the clear rental value of the real estate in the school districts * * * 
so that the assessment could be made upon the principle now pre- 
scribed by the school laws." This would always give them a school 
u as a certainty." 

Judge Hall then came back to the supply of teachers: "This 
difficulty is not confined to our system; it prevails throughout the 
Union." In Massachusetts the difficulty has been met by the normal 
school, but this kind of school has been adopted from Prussia; 
lt absolute power can readily form a system of education, perfect in 
the exhibition — a regular gradation from top to bottom, each part 
holding up that below, and upholding that above it. Such is the 
Prussian system; and learned men, curious in these matters, seem 
disposed to make it their pattern." He summarizes his faith in the 
following clear-cut and luminous statements: 

We want a supply of teachers for common schools, such as our districts can employ 
in their common schools, and sufficient for all our common schools. Teachers 
educated in normal schools may have special qualifications of superior value 
(although as a general position this is doubted, it is believed to be a notion); but 
such teachers can not be teachers of common schools; common schools can not employ 
them; for common schools, we must have a supply of .such teachers as common 
schools can employ. * * * Colleges supply their own teachers. * * * Why 
can not scholars of common schools, having gone through a course of education in 
them, likewise become teachers of what they have learned? 

Meetings of the New Castle County convention were held in 1841 
and 1842, but their proceedings have not been available. 1 In 
1843, 72 delegates were present from 32 districts, and Morton 
McMichacl, Esq., delivered "an eloquent and highly interesting dis- 
course on the advantages of common schools." 

The main business of this session seems to have been to listen 
to a report by Judge Hall on the proceedings of the State school 
convention held in Dover in January, 1843. That organization dis- 
cussed a proposition "to change the law so that the levy court of each 
county shall lay a tax upon the taxables of each school district, 
of at least $50, to be collected and paid into the county treasury." 
The proposed change was at first approved by the convention, but 
after adjournment the reactionaries prevailed and the earlier action 

1 No journals for these years have been found; and Miss Hasse, in her Index to Documents of the State of 
Delaware, marks them also as "not found" (pp. 55), but Newlin in his address before the Delaware Legisla- 
ture in 1857 (p. 11) says '-'New Castle County has held 21 conventions" and the Delaware State Journal 
for Sept. 2, 1842, has an announcement that the school convention was to meet on the 6th. 



54 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

was reversed. There was, however, considerable sentiment for such 
a law. Kent County, in fact, insisted on a larger sum than $50 u as 
proper to be raised in each district." 1 In that county one school 
district had asked and obtained u a provision by law to raise by tax 
more than $300, by vote of the district" and there "a very praise- 
worthy spirit in favor of affording to the rising generation the facility 
of good common school education prevails." 2 

The meeting in 1844 was more numerously attended than in the 
previous year. The reports were fuller and the discussion both 
more animated and of more general interest. There was one on 
textbooks which carried a recommendation of a uniform series, 
including the books of Salem Town and the histories of S. A. Good- 
rich, but with all of their argument and recommendations the sepa- 
rate reports continue to show little uniformity in the texts used, 
for the compelling force of law was absent. A subject of much more 
importance was that which proposed to ask the legislature to take 
"into consideration the propriety of appointing some general super- 
intendent to whom the supervision of common-school interests shall 
be confided." This resolution was proposed to the convention, but 
Judge Hall was against it. True, no particular name appears in 
opposition, but the old arguments used are his — the voice of Jacob 
was there. It was pointed out that Delaware was able to make a 
larger contribution from its school fund for education than any other 
State. Connecticut distributed the year before $80 per district, 
but Delaware distributed $137, and it was declared that the State 
must depend on the general intelligence of the people to advance 
the schools: 

The great question is, How can this most certainly be done? It is positively denied 
that the confiding of our common-school interests to the supervision of a general 
superintendent, or the incorporation in our system of any salaried officer, is adapted 
to this purpose, or to produce any good. Such an officer might make a show of our 
schools on paper, but he would do nothing to make them better. He would take no 
part practically to improve the schools. Those least capable of doing are usually 
most fluent to tell how to do. * * * The law gives the people of every school 
district power to organize and act as a body upon the subject of a school; they can 
thus have as good a school as. they please to provide for; in no school district in the 
State where reasonable pains have been taken to have a good school has there been 
a failure; the law gives as much power as is necessary or safe; * * * let the school 
voters of each district feel the responsibility of the charge which the law devolves 
upon them. * * * It is believed common schools can be improved in no other 
way. 

1 By act of Feb. 22, 1843, District No. 18, in Kent County was allowed to charge tuition for the summer 
quarter (ch. 474, acts of 1843, p. 527). It was to be collected by the collector of the districts, but this law 
was not to go into force until the district had raised $300 by the usual methods. 

2 This is the end of Judge Hall's report on the State convention of 1843. Powell (p. 147) refers to it, 
quoting from Barnard' j Journal (XVI, 370), which probably quotes this report to the New Castle school 
convention for 1843, p. 2. I have been able to find no other contemporaneous reference to this State con- 
vention. There is no mention of it in the Delaware Gazette (Wilmington) for Dec. 30, 1842, Jan. 6, 20, 
Feb. 2, 1843; nor in the Delaware State Journal (Wilmington) for Jan. 3, 6, 10, 17, 20, 27, Feb. 3, 1843. No 
other contemporaneous newspapers have been seen. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 55 

And yet, had the author of this report taken the time to reflect 
on the figures sent in to this convention from the school districts of 
New Castle County, he must of necessity have soon come to the 
conclusion that nothing approaching uniformity or universality in 
education could ever be expected in that county, at least till some 
compelling power brought down from above should force it. This the 
subsequent educational history of Delaware most abundantly proves, 
for in 1844 some districts in New Castle County had schools, some 
had not; some reported and some failed to report; some kept the 
school open for the school year, some for 11 months and some for 4; 
some had an average attendance of 50 per cent and some of 37| per 
cent; one paid as much as $525 per year for teachers and another 
hired its teachers for four months at $9.37^ per month. Some 
included Latin and Greek in their courses and taught not only 
Horace, Juvenal, and Homer, but also algebra, geometry, history, 
and bookkeeping, while others confined themselves to the rudiments. 
Some levied a moderate and proper tax for school support, others 
clung to the outgrown idea of contributions; some made instruc- 
tion free, others demanded $1.25 "from each scholar "; uniformity 
in textbooks was recommended, but could not be enforced; while 
the texts used and the courses given varied according to the school 
and the teacher. 

From these reports it would seem that the schools were suffering 
from that excessive liberty which was theirs under the law and for 
which Judge Hall plead so insistently. Granting his great service 
to the schools time and time again, it does seem that here at least 
he was a retarding factor, not a leader or organizer. 

The lack of organization, and the consequent disadvantages, 
made itself felt also in the inability of those interested in the broad 
subject of education from getting their discussions and arguments 
easily before the people. There were few organs of publicity acces- 
sible. Judge Hall used the journal of the New Castle school conven- 
tion for the views of the conservatives. The progressives replied 
in various ways. In 1845 this took the form of a report to the 
general assembly on the public schools of Kent County, by Charles 
Marim, county superintendent, who under the guise of a county 
report to the legislature discussed the school situation in the State. 
It will be quickly noticed that his opinions vary widely from those 
of Judge Hall, whose report on New Castle County in 1841 has been 
quoted already. Mr. Marim had been superintendent of Kent County 
for some years ; he had visited the schools and had studied them at 
first-hand and by personal inspection. , He writes that his tour in 
1842 "was attended by circumstances well calculated to inspire 
emotions of the most agreeable character." 



56 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

His conclusions were that the system was to a " great extent use- 
ful/' was gradually overcoming the prejudice of earlier years, and 
that any attempt to repeal the law in existence would mean the po- 
litical death of the one who attempted it. Some schools were almost 
models, and as such the schools of Smyrna and CantwelFs Bridge are 
named, but the system was not without faults . His opinion was that — 

No efficient plan could be devised for educating the great mass of our population 
which is exclusively supported by a public fund, unless a compulsory provision is 
incorporated in it, similar to that which prevails in Prussia, obliging the people to 
school their children. 

He recognizes the scarcity of good teachers, urges that arrange- 
ments be made with Delaware College in this regard, and points out 
the fallacy in Judge Hall's argument that they might be taken out 
of the schools themselves. He suggests the desirableness of an exam- 
ination of teachers and urges the appointment of a State superin- 
tendent with an adequate salary, saying: 

At all events, I am thoroughly satisfied of the necessity of placing at once a head 
to our school system. It is now without one, and we can not expect it to proceed with 
uniform prosperity until this deficiency be supplied. 1 

In 1845 the attendance at the county convention was smaller than 
in 1844. They discussed again the subject of general taxation and 
appointed a committee to collect school statistics. They considered 
the incautious way in which teachers were employed and the defi- 
ciency of libraries; they considered the importance of having the 
cooperation of women in their work and invited them to attend the 
next session of the convention as spectators. The reports on the 
schools did not differ from those of earlier years, nor did they differ 
in 1846 when Judge Hall delivered an address. 

From about this time it becomes evident that there had been 
developing steadily since the first passage of the school law in 1829 
two parties in the State who considered the administration of the 
schools from opposite standpoints. The party which had been con- 
stantly in power were the decentralizationists, under the leadership 
of Judge Hall, who insisted on the most complete liberty of action. 
The districts were formed by legislative action; when this had been 
accomplished all was then left to individual school district initiative, 
with what disastrous results is everywhere early and openly manifest. 
Even Judge Hall recognized this possibility of weakness, but only 
Acting Gov. William Temple had a superior way of settling these 
difficulties, for after animadverting on the criticisms on the school 
laws he declared that in his judgment — 

these difficulties arise from the natural imperfections of the human heart, rather than 
defects in the existing law; time and experience will eradicate the evils, while too 
much legislation might aggravate rather than remove them. 2 

i S. J., 1845, p. 43-52. 2 H. J., 1847, pp. 19. 



THE BEGINNINGS OP PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 57 

The other party we may call the centralizers. They were in the 
minority for a generation, but they began to make themselves felt 
in spite of the eloquence and earnestness of Judge Hall. They in- 
sisted on a general and uniform system of school taxation for the 
State and that a State superintendent should be appointed through 
whose efforts the local systems might be unified and the work made 
uniform. They brought the subject up year after year in the New 
Castle County conventions, but Judge Hall was always on hand to 
oppose their plans. The two parties agreed on certain elementary 
principles — (1) that the only just and proper way to raise the needed 
funds was by taxation; and (2) that the schools should present an 
equality of opportunity for all. Judge Hall rendered a service to the 
State in driving this idea home : 

. With respect to the dividend from the school fund being for the poor, the notion is 
both false and injurious. In all our institutions the poor and rich are upon the same 
platform; we allow no distinctions formed on these conditions. We measure man's 
worth by intelligence, capacity, moral excellency — and consequent usefulness; not 
by dollars and cents. In school the poor man's child is as independent as the rich 
man's; there is no more charity for one than the other. The dividend is intended to 
encourage and help the district to form a good school for all. 1 

So far, and it will be noticed that this statement goes beyond the 
original law of 1829, the two factions were together; in other respects 
they were as far apart as ever. In this same address Judge Hall 
holds up again to his terrified spectators the bugaboo of Prussian 
thought on education. He adds further: 

Yet there is a strong disposition in this country to conform school systems to the 
Prussian model. In the report of the Board of Education of Massachusetts of last 
December, it is stated : ' ' The cardinal principle which lies at the foundation of our 
educational system is that all the children of the State shall be educated by the 
State." Now let it be distinctly remarked that this is not the principle of our school 
system; but that our system is founded upon the position, the people must educate 
their own children; and all the State should do, or can do for any useful effect, is to 
organize them into communities so as to act together for that purpose, and help and 
encourage them to act efficiently. 2 

It is evident then that one of the tasks before those who hoped 
for a well-organized uniform school system in Delaware was to over- 
come this decentralizing influence. This was evidently the purpose 
of the convention in 1845 and 1846 when it recommended that the 
voters in each school district hold a special meeting in the coming 
December — 

to consider the expediency of applying to the legislature for the passage of a law 
providing some general system of taxation, for raising in the districts the sum that 
must be supplied in addition to the dividends from the school fund — in order to elicit 
the public feeling in relation to that important measure. 



1 Proceedings New Castle County convention, 1846, p. 15. 

2 Proceedings New Castle County convention, 1846, p. 11. The same idea had been expressed in aim est 
the same language in the Delaware State school convention in January, 1843, in Dover. See Barnard's 
Journal, xvi, 370, and Powell's Education in Delaware, p. 146. 



58 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Evidently the opinion of the leaders had somewhat changed since 
1843. 

The reports to the convention in 1847 would seem to indicate 
that more success was attending the various efforts to get accounts 
of the workings of the schools. It is evident that much progress 
was being made, but the reports indicate that the schools were still 
grievously undermanned, that schoolhouses received little attention, 
that benches and desks were but poorly adapted to the needs of the 
children, that school libraries were almost entirely wanting, and that 
there was no grading of pupils and little uniformity in textbooks, 
in courses, or in the taxes levied. The pupils were substantially 
evenly divided between the sexes, but the attendance was every- 
where poor. On the other hand the length of the school term was 
much longer than might be expected — the schools being open in 
many cases, according to report, all the year — but, while the teachers 
were overworked, they were miserably underpaid. As a rule there 
were no other schools (apparently private schools) reported in the 
districts, but an " increased desire of mental improvement" seems 
to have been general. The condition of school sentiment in Kent 
and New Castle Counties was contrasted. In Kent there was little 
opposition to the schools and no school convention; the county had 
only half as many children of school age as New Castle and yet 
those who attended no school were twice as many in Kent as in 
New Castle. The difference is attributed to the work of the school 
convention which now also urges the organization of a county 
teachers' association and boldly asks the commissioners of the school 
districts "to permit their respective teachers to devote one week 
during the year to the attendance upon such association." The 
necessity of organization and centralization was becoming more and 
more evident. 

The sum of the reports for 1848 was that the schools were improv- 
ing, that opposition to taxes was disappearing, and that — 

in all districts where the money is raised by tax the sum raised is liberal, and the 
school is easily supported and prosperous. Where there is no tax, but the money 
raised by voluntary contributions, the sum is stinted and inadequate, and the schools 
drag heavily. 

In February, 1849, Judge Hall presented to the general assembly 
a lengthy document which he called a Report on the Schools of New 
Castle County. It is in reality a review of the school situation, an 
examination of the difficulties and of the faults of the system in use. 
and an extended argument against change. This position is natural 
for the system in use was Judge Hall's own evolution, and the expe- 
rience of 25 years had not caused him to alter his opinions. 

He admitted that there were weaknesses in the system as admin- 
istered. Some of these were little less than deliberate frauds prac- 



THE BEGINNINGS OE PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 59 

ticed on the public in the interest of the district or of individuals in 
the district. 1 He had no remedy for these abuses. He argued that 
"upon the principles of our institutions there can be no remedy" if 
the people u set no value on education" and so consign all depending 
on their care to " ignorance and degradation." He insisted that "the 
evil will cure itself, and the cure, although too slow for our anxieties^ 
will be the best that can be devised in its ultimate effects." He 
claimed, and no doubt with perfect truth, that these abuses had been 
much made use of to injure the schools, and then adds: 

The desideratum is to form a right public sentiment through which the people will 
engage and become active to provide good schools for their children. With this 
public sentiment nothing else will be necessary, for the people once engaged will 
not stop short of anything ascertained to be needful, but without it nothing else will 
avail. Beneficient bounties will not — this we see in England; power can not — this 
we see in Prussia; the people themselves can accomplish it by putting forth their 
own efforts, as seen in Scotland and New England. 

To those who were disposed "to force up our school system by 
compulsory law" he replied that "when we resort to compulsion, 
whether of law or other means, we foster tempers, in ourselves, 
arbitrary and overbearing, and in them perverse and obstinate — 
both parties are made worse." 

To those who favored the employment of "agents, as superintend- 
ents, lecturers, or otherwise, to go among the people and arouse 
them to effort," Judge Hall answered that such an officer is not 
necessary to find out the condition of particular schools; that the 
auditor has ample power in the matter of finances, and that a redi- 
vision of the counties so as to even up the inequalities in the districts 
would put all these complaints at rest within two years. In discussing 
the matter of a State superintendent he declared that all of his 
duties were already provided for by law and proposed that the New 
Castle school convention should be turned into a similar meeting for 
the whole State. 2 

The convention of 1849 went back to basic principles and devoted 
itself to a discussion of the question whether it is "right and proper 
to resort to taxation to support common schools." It would seem 
that this subject had been settled long before, but the "affirmative 
was carried with only one dissenting vote." More attention was 
given by this convention to the condition of schoolhouses. The 

1 In a special report to the legislature in 1843, S. Spearman, then State auditor, said: 
" In settling the school accounts of the respective school districts in the State the auditor has found it 
impossible to look behind the vouchers presented by the respective school communities who came before 
him for settlement. It is believed that much peculation is practiced upon the fund paid to the respective 
districts for the purpose of maintaining schools by those who disburse the money. This idea was first 
presented from noticing how much more money it required to pay the contingent expenses of some districts 
than others under like circumstances and condition. This evil may be remedied by compelling the clerk 
of each district to cause to be published * * * the account which shall be settled by the auditor." 
S. J., 1843, p. 66. 
* H. J., 1849, pp. 214-229, and S. J., 1849, pp. 120-134. 



60 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

reports of the separate districts were now tabulated for the first 
time. The figures are so imperfect that it is doubtful if they are of 
any value, but the principal figures are given for what they are worth: 

36 districts in New Castle County raised $6,342.50 by tax for the use of schools, 
being an average of $176.20. 

5 districts raised about $300 by subscription. 

37 districts had 394 months of school, or nearly 11 months each; 10 districts reported 
their school as kept for 12 months. 

26 districts reported 2,392 children of school age, or 92 to a district. 

34 districts reported 1,451 boys and 1,278 girls enrolled, while 6 districts reported 
394 pupils, enrollment not divided by sex. 

29 districts reported that they paid their men teachers $2,066 per quarter, being an 
average of $71 each, and 16 paid its women teachers $799, or $50 per quarter; 1 
district paid men $500 per year, 2 paid $400, 6 paid $300, and 1 paid $18 per 
month. 

73 districts reported 36 schoolhouses, the largest of which was 30 feet square; about 
half of those reported were "comfortable" or "convenient" and improvements 
in others were promised. 

Of the 40 reporting on the "condition of school" a large majority gave the situation 
as favorable, but these would really be the schools most ready to report, and 
it may safely be assumed that the condition of the 33 from which no reports were 
received was less prosperous and that they met with more opposition. 

No proceedings of the school convention for 1850 have been 
seen. The Delaware Gazette for August 23 announced that it 
was to meet on September 3 and that the subject for ' discussion 
was ' - What should be the standard of instruction in common schools ?" 
The meeting was held, but evidently was not up to standard, for 
the Gazette says in its issue for September 6: "This body was quite 
numerously attended on Tuesday last, but we fear that the enthu- 
siasm in the cause is not as great as it should be." It would seem 
that its proceedings were not published. No copy has been seen, 
nor has reference to such been found. 

In 1851 Gov. William H. Ross, in his inaugural address, analyzed 
the school situation accurately and declared that other States had 
provided themselves with ' ' a much more liberal and extensive system 
of general instruction than we have yet adopted." He urged "such 
a revision of our present school laws as * * * will best adapt 
them to the increasing demands and necessities of the times." He 
referred to the "utter inefficiency" of the plan then in use, declared 
a large part of the funds raised under that system was "wasted 
and misapplied," and recommended — 

a tax sufficient to sustain the schools in regular operation, without any intermission 
of time for the want of funds, which tax should be levied, collected, and paid over 
to the county treasurer as all other taxes are, and by him distributed pro rata. 1 

But it would seem that the various parties, cliques, and factions 
in the State, while all wanted in a general way to advance the in- 

i H. J., 1851, pp. 157-158. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 61 

terests of the schools, could not agree on any common plan of action. 
They were working at cross-purposes with each other, and each 
sought to advance his hobby rather than come together and agree 
on some constructive program. Thus the New Castle convention 
in 1851, instead of taking up and urging the governor's suggestions, 
branched out and had some discussion on the architecture of school- 
houses and on the necessity of school libraries. It was urged also 
that information be collected on the state of the school districts; 
that the school commissioners visit the schools at least once a month; 
that the commissioners appropriate a certain part of their income to 
the purchase of suitable schoolbooks which were to be resold to the 
children at cost, in this way reducing prices and promoting uniformity ; 
the question of equal payments to large and small districts was con- 
sidered, and it was proposed to employ an "agent" whose duty it 
would be to visit — 

each school district and district school in the county, to diffuse information, and by 
private intercourse and public addresses excite in parents and children higher regard 
for school privileges, more concern for school advantages, juster views of what schools 
should be, and what accommodations should be provided — as schoolhouses, grounds, 
and fixtures — and deeper general interest in this all-important subject; also to collect 
statistics relative to the schools. 

This proposition came very near to the superintendency of other 
States and this centralizing tendency did not fail to attract the 
attention of the conservative decentralizes, but they allowed it to 
pass and contented themselves with a brief review of what their 
local, decentralized system had done: 

It is not 20 years since our school system went into operation. In the outset it 
was met by determined hostility. Every step of its onward movement has been 
resisted by inveterate prejudices, intense selfishness, ingenious sophistry, and 
unyielding interest and ignorance. Against these influences there has been no 
compulsion, no excitement, not even positive requirement of law, nothing but the 
voluntary action of the people meeting and voting in their districts according to their 
judgments. So far as there has been any bias, it has proceeded from the adverse 
causes which we have noticed. In furtherance of the system there has been nothing 
but its merits dispassionat3ly appreciated by the good sense and sound understand- 
ings of the school voters. 

The writer then proceeds to reinforce his conclusions from the 
reports. He says that the lowest sum raised by taxation out of the 44 
districts reporting in that year was $50; in two districts only was the 
sum thus raised so low. The average raised in all the districts was 
$173 to the district. In 1838 the average was little more than $100 
per district. Only one district in New Castle County contented 
itself with the legal minimum of $25; more than half the districts 
raised from $100 to $300, with an average of $160. There was 
"substantial evidence of general and growing appreciation of common 
schools by our citizens;" 39 districts out of the 44 reporting raised 



62 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

their school money by taxation, and out of the 57 districts which had 
reported in the last two years 51 had used the tax method. 

The convention of 1852 was rather more aggressive in tone, and 
devoted itself mainly to reports on schoolhouses and ventilation. 
These do not present a favorable or encouraging view of the situa- 
tion, and the old fight over the voluntary character of the tax law 
was also renewed. One district condemned the existing system, 
referring to it as "the present odious school law," because it left the 
districts at liberty to do each year as they saw fit. The conservatives 
defended the law and uttered what they evidently thought to be an 
unanswerable argument: "The law is established and we can not 
alter it. * * * It is further believed that there is no need of a 
change." 

The convention of 1853 shows women as members for the first 
time. Teachers were also present as such, and an effort was now 
made to compile a teachers' directory. A committee was also 
appointed to memorialize the legislature to change the school tax law 
for New Castle County and put it on the same footing as other taxes, 
indicating a step in advance by the progressive forces. The demand 
for an "agent," voiced in 1851, is renewed, and he is now boldly 
called a "superintendent," his duties being missionary in character. 
Under the remarks is added a long and eloquent plea for improve- 
ments in the schoolhouses and an encouraging report on the condi- 
tion of the schools in New Castle County, where 45 schools out of the 
77 districts reported and 43 raised money by taxation. When appor- 
tioned "among the number of scholars reported from these districts" 
it was found that there was raised for each scholar in Brandywine 
Hundred, $2.84; in Christiana, $3.35; Mill Creek, $1.85; White Clay, 
$2.54; New Castle, $3.40; Red Lion, $3.09; Pencader, $2.83; St. 
Georges, $4.91; Appoquinimink, $2.75; average of all, $3.02. It 
was found further that New Castle County raised more money by 
taxation for schools than it received from the school fund by more 
than one-fifth. On the other hand, Sussex raised little more than 
one-third as much by taxation as it received from the fund, and the 
average for each district was only $39.04|. 1 

The situation in Kent was better than in Sussex, but not so good 
as in New Castle. In Kent more than half as much was raised by 
taxation as was received from the school fund. Twelve districts in 
Kent raised only $25 each, which was the minimum amount neces- 
sary to draw the proportion due from the school fund; 11 districts 
raised $50 or more; 6 exceeded $100, and 4 raised more than $150 
each. In 28 out of the 52 districts in the county there was ground 
to believe that there was "a spirit of school improvement." The 

1 See also the Table 3, p. 171. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 



63 



United School Districts in New Castle County were the only ones 
which raised as much money as was needed; United District Nos. 23 
and 75 (Christiana and Brandywine) raised $900; Nos. 45 and 46 
(New Castle) raised $2,000, and Nos. 9 to 18 (Wilmington) raised 
upward of $8,000, but "in no other districts in the State is there 
sufficient money raised for making their schools what they ought to 
be." This report then presents a statement of the comparative 
increase in the amounts raised in the various counties as follows : 1 



Amounts raised for schools. 



Counties. 


In 1834. 


In 1841. 


In 1852. 




$6, 986. 55 
4, 230. 00 
2, 845. 15 


$8,997.00 
6, 597. 00 
4, 067. 00 


$12, 650. 00 


Kent 


5, 108. 00 


Sussex 


3, 501. 00 





It was thought that these figures in the three counties showed the 
good effects of the New Castle school convention and "make appar- 
ent the disadvantages in Kent and Sussex for want of means to 
direct the attention of the people to their common schools." And, 
as usual, in a long and eloquent harangue it was denied that any of 
these disadvantages were to be traced to the faults in the voluntary 
law. It is evident that sentiment in the county and in the conven- 
tion itself was crystallizing into a demand for a compulsory tax law; 
the convention had this year even dared make such a recommenda- 
tion to the assembly and the governor had done the same. All this 
was hard on the conservatives, and the writer of the report, pre- 
sumably Judge Hall, labored faithfully to stem the tide which was 
setting strongly in favor of a general State law. Again use is made 
of the bugaboo of Prussian absolutism, and it was argued that ' < con- 
tention and agitation, controversy because of difference of opinion, are 
the price of liberty." 

The proceedings of the conventions for 1854 and 1855 are the last 
available. There is now an evident change in the tone of the con- 
vention. It was becoming more specific in its demands, more definite 
in its work, and deals less in glittering generalities. It would appear 
that those in charge were coming more and more to be the real 
teachers of the State and not mere friends of education. This is 
seen from their resolutions. They demand that a superintendent of 
schools for the county be appointed " whose duty it shall be to visit 
the schools and to note the state of the houses and furniture and to 
examine the pupils and inspect the mode of teaching adopted in the 
different schools." A bill was drafted embracing these and other 

1 The rate has not been worked out for other years, but in 1858 the sums raised by contributions and taxes 
for schools in New Castle was about 14 cents on the hundred dollars of taxable property; in Kent it was 
13 £ cents and in Sussex about 6f cents. 



64 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

amendments to the school law and presented to the general assembly 
of 1855. It even passed the house, but was defeated in the senate. 1 

The organization of a teachers' institute was also proposed by the 
convention, and it was suggested that the "people of the districts 
would do well to display a proper liberality and pay the expenses of 
their teachers while attending these meetings." An improvement in 
the quality of teachers was urged and steps were taken to establish a 
monthly school journal. 

The Delaware Gazette (Wilmington) reports the proceedings for 
1855 and shows the fortunes of the programs advocated in 1854. 
Dr. Grimshaw, in reporting on the fortunes of his School Journal, said 
that he had received more letters of encouragement from other States 
than from Delaware and that want of support had caused its sus- 
pension. With astonishing loyalty to an ideal the convention dis- 
cussed the question of its revival. It was reported that the teachers' 
association idea had also failed and for the same reason — lack of 
interest on the part of the teachers and others. 

A step in advance is shown in the recommendation that textbooks 
be bought out of public funds and made free so as to "remedy the 
present defects in school classification." A list of books suitable for 
use of the public schools was reported. It included: Holbrook's 
Child's First Book in Arithmetic; Stoddart's Intellectual Arithmetic; 
Greenleaf's Common School Arithmetic; Davies's mathematical 
series; Tower's Intellectual Algebra; Mayhew's Bookkeeping; 
Northend's Dictation Exercises; Monteith's Manual of Geography; 
Connell's Primary Geography; Ackerman's Natural History; Swan's 
Speller or Fowle's Common School Speller; Sanders's readers; Par- 
ley's first, second, and third books of history, combined with geog- 
raphy; Grimshaw's History of the United States; Willson's American 
History; Willson's Outlines of History; Shurtleff's Governmental 
Instructor; Tower's Grammar; Johnston's or Parker's Natural Phi- 
losophy; Comstock's Chemistry. 2 

This school convention was organized for and was mainly confined 
in representation to New Castle County, but it is evident that in 
influence and leadership it was as large as the State. It was doing 
much to break down hostility to State taxation, and thus became 
the main factor in putting the question of school support beyond the 
power of the annual caprice, narrowness, and prejudice of the average 
voter. The conservatives were still nominally in power, but it was 
becoming more and more evident that the old order was gradually 
giving place to the new, and that the tenacious adherence to certain 

1 Barnard's Journal, xvi, 372. See also H. J., 1855, pp. 203-205, 324. In 1853 an effort had been made to 
obtain from the legislature the appointment of county superintendents, with a definite salary, and with. 
power to visit the district schools, collect and diffuse information, and by private intercourse and public 
addresses arouse a keener interest in public education. The program failed, but it is evident that the 
effort of 1855 was a revival of the same idea. 

2 See reports in the Delaware Gazette (Wilmington) for Sept. 7, 1855 (in Library of Congress). 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 65 

forms because they were supposed to represent a purer democracy 
was gradually yielding before a centralizing tendency demanding 
results rather than satisfying itself with mere empty theories of 
government. 1 

The last school convention of New Castle County seems to have 
been held in 1855. 2 Its place was substantially filled by the "con- 
vention of the friends of education in Delaware, " which met at Dover 
on January 15, 1857. There had been an earlier State convention 
in Dover in January, 1843, and some reference to its discussions has 
been had in this paper already, but it would seem that the spirit of 
individualism and of decentralization had then been too strong for 
united State action and the movement failed. Its revival in 1857 
was another indication of the growing demand for State educational 
solidarity. The convention of 1857 drew up a series of resolutions 
which were presented to the legislature then in session. The con- 
vention recommended: (1) That the taxation for public schools 
be made permanent and that a State superintendent be appointed; 
(2) that the school commissioners be elected for three years, one each 
year; (3) that the State be redistricted ; (4) that provision be made 
for securing good teachers; (5) that normal schools were "in dispen- 
sable and vital" to the success of the system. 3 

It will be noticed that the first, third, and fifth resolutions had been 
opposed by the conservatives. The State was evidently now break- 
ing away from their leadership. 

In 1857 Gov. P. F. Causey reported that during the previous year 
some $53,000 had been expended for the use of the free schools, and 
that over 12,000 children had been in attendance. He suggested that 
provision be made for a a higher grade of instruction for such children 
as may, in the free schools, show the strongest evidences of talent 
and merit" and recommended the appointment of a "superin ten dent 
for the State, or one for each county, with a proper compensation, 
whose duty it shall be to visit annually all the schools in his jurisdic- 
tion, and make report." 4 

In 1859 he warned the legislature that, unless some step was taken 
speedily toward the improvement of the public schools, the State 
would soon find itself "far behind" nearly all the others. He then 
continues : 

In many, I mourn to say very many, of our free schools, the pupils have graduated 
nearly up to the level of their teachers when they have learned to write their names 
and to read without spelling out their lessons. * * * Our State ought at once to 

i Proceedings of School Convention of New Castle County, Del. Years seen: 1836, 1837, 1838, 1839, 1840, 
1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854— all in Bureau of Education Library. There 
is a brief summary of these meetings in Barnard's Journal, xvi, 369-372, on which is based the summary in 
Powell's Education, 145-147. 

2 The convention of 1855 agreed to meet again in 1856, but no report of such meeting has been seen. 

s S. J., 1857, p. 54. 

4 See his message of Jan. 6, 1856, in S. J., 1857, pp. 11-12. 

93106—17 5 



66 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

be redivided into school districts, and every district provided without delay with a 
properly constructed schoolhouse and fixtures, and a teacher capable of instructing 
in all the branches of a thorough and substantial English education. * * * This 
subject * * * has been the theme of much debate in our legislative halls for many 
years, and yet each succeeding session has ended in little or no alteration for the 
better. 1 

Gov. Causey was succeeded by William Burton, who in his inaugural 
two weeks later declared : 

It is a melancholy fact that in our State, * ' * * any free white person should 
arrive at lawful age without being instructed in the first rudiments of an English 
education. Yet the last census tells the sad tale that there are in Delaware 4,536 
white native-born persons who can neither read nor write. * * * In some districts 
schools are only kept open sufficiently long to exhaust the fund derived from the State. 
In others, a majority of the voters deciding against a tax, the schoolhouses are suffered 
to remain closed the entire year. * * * Party spirit, too, has been known to 
control the result of a school election. 2 

Such after 30 years of conservative, laissez faire administration 
was the condition of public schools in Delaware. 

IV. ACTUAL ACCOMPLISHMENT, 1829-1861. 

Having thus traced with considerable detail the ebb and flow of 
sentiment for public-school education in the State of Delaware for a 
whole generation immediately following the school enactment of 
1829, it is now possible to review and take stock of gains to the cause 
during the period. 

It will be recalled, in the first place, that the act of 1829 provided 
for a purely voluntary system. As Judge Hall characterized it, 
every school district was so organized that its citizens were left free 
to say whether they would have a good school, an inferior school, or 
no school at all. This "free" system broke down at the first trial. 
The idea of 1829 was to raise funds by contributions. Experience 
demanded and secured in 1830 an act permitting a tax to be voted 
by the citizens of the district. This was a step in the direction of 
a State system. But this advance was quickly followed by a step 
backward. The act of 1829 required the local districts to raise as 
much as they were to receive from the school fund; an amendment 
of 1830 cut this requirement exactly in half; another in 1837 reduced 
it to $25, and this beggarly sum was sometimes raised in ways that 
were in violation of the spirit of the law. But while these unfavorable 
symptoms were developing, the organization of individual schools was 
going on. There were favorable reports of the growth of the system 
as early as 1833, and in his message to the assembly of 1845 3 Gov. 
Cooper could report that all the school districts were then organized 
with a few exceptions, and proof that the system was winning its 
way was shown by the fact that every year added to those who 
availed themselves of the opportunity to use the schools. 

i Message of Jan. 4, 1859, in H. J., 1859, p. 14. 2 Message of Jan. 18, 1859, H. J., 1859, pp. 83-84. 
3H. J., 1845, p. 8. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 67 

In the meantime Judge Hall had organized the New Castle County 
school convention, which, from 1836 to 1855, conducted a continuous 
agitation looking toward a greater development of the schools. The 
work of the convention was of value in that it kept the subject of the 
schools before the people and helped to awaken them to a realization 
of both its importance and necessity. On the other hand, its influence 
was confined in the main to New Castle County, and, being under the 
influence of Judge Hall, it advocated a retention of all power in the 
hands of the local school district, fought all efforts at centralization, 
and in 1838 opposed, in an elaborate report, the establishment of a 
State normal school. But as time went on, and as the individual 
leaders and educational thinkers of the State passed from a condition 
of tutelage to one of independence in thought, conservative views 
began to lose their authority. The necessity for a uniform State tax 
and for uniform State supervision and control became more manifest. 

The centralizing tendency is manifest in the reorganization of the 
State educational convention in 1857, which after essaying an organi- 
zation in 1843 had failed to maintain itself before the people. In 
1846 teachers' societies were recommended; an association of New 
Castle teachers was organized in 1847, but failed. It was again 
organized in 1854 and met with but little more success, but these 
repeated efforts show the drift of educational thought. The tend- 
ency in this direction is also indicated by the publication in 1854-55 
of at least four issues of the Delaware School Journal, 1 under the 
editorial direction of Dr. A. H. Grimshaw, then county superintendent 
of New Castle. The Journal was published in Wilmington and the 
first number is that for November, 1854. The prospectus promised 
monthly issues at an annual cost of $1 : 

The Journal will contain about 24 pages of reading matter; it will be devoted to 
the school question and will also contain judicious selections on literary and scientific 
topics. This number will be sent to gentlemen throughout the State, whose cooper- 
ation we earnestly solicit. The editors do not expect to realize any pecuniary profits 
from this undertaking, but feel a sincere desire to advance the cause of education 
and promote the welfare of their fellow citizens. 

The scope and plans of the Journal were still more fully set forth 
in the introduction, which serves also both as an historical review 
of the situation up to that time and as an outline for future endeavor : 

We would beg leave to remark, in the outset, that this is to be a State school journal; 
its whole object will be to promote the cause of common schools throughout all parts 
of our State. 

We find that nearly all of our neighboring States are making active exertions to 
improve their schools and advance the cause of popular education; and we note the 
means employed are school journals, educationalconventions, teachers' institutes, and 

1 See Hasse's Index to Delaware Documents, p. 56. The first number was for November, 1854, and at 
least four numbers were issued, being dated November and December, 1854, and January and February, 
1855, of 24 pages each. There is a set in the Delaware Historical Society at Wilmington. The Bureau of 
Education has Nos. 1 and 3, November, 1854, and January, 1855, pp. 1-24 + 49-72. 



68 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IE" DELAWARE. 

district libraries and lectures. In the State of Delaware there is no settled, deter- 
mined, constant, and energetic action by means of which our teachers can be roused 
to the necessity of self-improvement or our people interested in that subject of vital 
importance to the American Nation, the subject of common schools. In this county, 
with the exception of a few desultory letters, generally intended to produce a local 
effect, and the annual report of Judge Hall, president of the county convention, there 
is no effort made to draw the attention of the people to the proper consideration of the 
school question. In the counties of Kent and Sussex, we believe there is not a line 
written. This is our apology for attempting to establish a journal which shall contain 
editorial and original articles upon all the questions which suggest themselves in 
connection with education, and whose columns shall be open for the reception of 
communications and the discussion of educational topics. 

The people of this State need to be awakened; not only this, they need to be 
instructed upon the subject of common schools. First we need good schoolhouses, 
and we must learn how to plan them. Second we need good teachers, and we must 
devise some means to secure them. Third we need school libraries, and we must 
acquire a taste for reading in order to establish them. Fourth we need a revision of 
the school law; that is, our tax must not depend upon the precarious votes of every 
school election, any more than our county, road, or poor taxes; our commissioners 
must be made a more permanent body, only one being changed each year. 

* * * We have a school fund, schoolhouses, teachers, pupils; but we have not 
good common schools. * * * It is very manifest that we need some means of 
infusing vitality into our school system. If the press is a mighty engine, if it can 
influence the people upon religious, political, and agricultural subjects, it can do so 
upon educational topics. We have, therefore, because no one else has seized the 
helm to guide public opinion, taken upon ourselves the office of pilot. We shall 
endeavor to collect as much information as possible upon the condition of the schools 
in all the districts of the State; we shall try to ascertain the qualifications of the teachers 
employed in our common schools, the manner in which the various committees 
perform their duties, and the number of votes polled at each school election. l 

It was a good plan, boldly conceived and bravely put into action. 
Had the editor been able to execute his plans as outlined above, 
had he been able to gather and print information on the subject of 
the public schools and to make suggestions for their improvement, 
his work would have been of the greatest service to the schools and to 
the State. He made a good beginning, and circulated 400 or 500 
copies of the Journal, but unfortunately the times were not pro- 
pitious and although the editor pledged himself if the first number was 
issued "to continue the publication for one year," the publication 
seems to have been suspended with the issue of the fourth number, 
that for February, 1855. The School Journal died in debt, and the 
school districts of New Castle County were assessed $5 each to liquidate 
the outstanding obligations. The people had not supported the organ 
intended for their advancement. 

During the fifties there were other indications of educational prog- 
ress. Institutions beyond the public school grade were chartered, 2 

1 Prospectus in vol. 1, pp. 1-3. 

2 Georgetown Academy in 1847; Smyrna Union School in 1853, ch. 643; Wesleyan Female Collegiate 
Institute, changed to Wesleyan Female College by ch. 152, laws of 1855; Delaware City Academy, 1857, 
ch. 400, and 1859, ch. 586. Scharf, I., 447, gives a long list of earlier private schools with the dates of then- 
charters. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 69 

and then there began the reorganization of public school systems in 
the towns. Thus by an act passed on February 4, 1852, 1 the New 
Castle Institute, a school "for teaching the first rudiments of learning, 
as well as classical literature and such of the sciences as are usually 
taught in academies and colleges, " which had been supported in part 
by the " contributions of individuals whose children receive instruc- 
tion 7 ' and in part out of "the funds of the New Castle Common/' 
was taken over by the town, called Districts 45 and 46 of New 
Castle County, and became the basis for the new public school 
system. 

The first organization of the Wilmington schools followed closely 
on the passage of the permissive law of 1829. The city was then 
divided into 10 school districts, but there was powerful opposition; 
only in the tenth district did the school become permanently estab- 
lished, although there were schools for short irregular periods in 
2 others. In 1833 there was a considerable sum of money coming 
to these districts, and the 9 were reorganized by act of February 6, 
1833, as United School District Nos. 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, and 
18, in New Castle County. A schoolhouse was built on the corner 
of French and Sixth Streets with 2 rooms of 120 seats each; men 
and women teachers were employed, and this arrangement continued 
till 1852, when the conviction of the increasing usefulness of the 
system made possible the act of February 9, 1852. 2 This act laid 
the foundations for a general public-school system for the city. It 
created a board of public education of 12. They were organized as 
a corporation, but were forbidden banking powers. They were to 
take over the public-school system as it then existed and organize 
and conduct schools for the benefit of white children and levy taxes 
for support of the same. 3 

Success followed so quickly on this reorganization that the board 
could say in its report in 1857: 

Instead of about 300 children, miserably accommodated and laboring under many 
inconveniences, we find 1,800 children, almost all well provided for, in comfortable 
buildings with neat furniture and arrangements, trained to habits of order, and gen- 
erally interested in their studies and attached to their teachers. 

In 1859 there were seven schoolhouses; Nos. 2, 3, 5, 6, and 7 were 
used for primary grades; Nos. 1 and 4 served for instruction in the 
higher grades. There were then 39 teachers and 1,940 pupils. But 
by this time the needs of the schools had outrun the ability of the 
city to provide out of its usual income. Authority to borrow was 
asked of the assembly and granted on condition of a favorable vote 
by the citizens. 'This approval was refused, and when the city again 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1852, ch. 623. 

2 See Hall's Historical Sketch, quoted in Wilmington School Report for 1875-76, p. 54. 

3 Laws of Delaware, 1852, ch. 636; amended in 1853 by ch. 5; and in 1855 by ch. 199; 1857, ch. 430. 



70 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

asked from the assembly authority to borrow without a popular vote 
their request was rejected. 1 

Supplementary agencies bearing on matters educational began also 
to take their place in the evolution of a more connected and stronger 
system. Thus the Agricultural Society of Sussex County was incor- 
porated; 2 its business was "to promote and encourage agricultural 
and horticultural pursuits and improvements in good husbandry and 
tillage of the soil, improvements in the breed of stock of all kinds." 
Similar in general purpose was the incorporation of the Red Lion Li- 
brary Association in 1857, with an endowment of $10,000 capital and 
a life of 20 years. 3 

The same year saw the incorporation of the Corbit Library into the 
school system. Dr. James Corbit had left by will $950 to St. Georges 
Hundred, in New Castle County, as an endowment for the purchase 
of books for the use of School District No. 61 in that county under the 
name and style of the " Corbit Library." By act of 1857 (ch. 416} 
the administration of the fund was put under charge of the school 
commissioners of the district and administered as part of the public- 
school system. 

It is evident that the terrors of the Prussianization of the school 
system of the State had now largely ceased to terrify, for the pro- 
gressives were boldly demanding first a State " agent" and later a 
State superintendent whose business would be to organize a real State 
system. Indeed, in 1857 a bill embodying some of these demands 
was passed by the senate, 4 but failed in the house. 

Nowhere' is this change of sentiment more manifest than in the 
feeling on the subject of normal schools. It will be recalled that a 
report made by Judge Hall and others in 1838 had opposed the estab- 
lishment of a State normal school and had terrified the timid by pic- 
turing the evils of overcentralization. But these fears were neither 
universal nor lasting in effect, for in 1843 a correspondent of the Dela- 
ware State Journal suggested that Delaware College be endowed by 
the State and then required to educate teachers for the public schools, 5 
and so far had the Delaware of 1857 advanced on this subject beyond 
the opinions of the report of 1838 that E. J. Newlin, president of 
Delaware College, on February 17, 1857, delivered an address by 
invitation on normal schools before the general assembly, and the 
address was later printed by order of the house. It will be of interest 
to summarize this address briefly in order to furnish a basis of com- 
parison and contrast with the report of 1838. 

1 See Laws of Delaware, 1855, ch. 203; 1859, ch. 668, and Hall's Historical Sketch, loc. cit., p. 57. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1857, ch. 458. 

3 Laws of Delaware, 1857, ch. 351. 
* S. J., 1857, pp. 151, 161. 

5 See correspondence of "Z" in Delaware State Journal (Wilmington), January, 1843. 



THE BEGINNINGS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 71 

This address is predicated on a petition to the assembly from the 
trustees of Delaware College pointing out that under the law provision 
had already been made for the organization, but not for the support 
of a normal school in that institution. 1 They now ask for an annual 
appropriation of $3,000 for the school and suggest that, in the ab- 
sence of any other method of raising this amount, it might be taken 
from the annual income of the school fund. This would mean a 
reduction on the average of $15 per district, which might be made 
good to the district by giving to each the privilege of sending one 
pupil to the school free of tuition charges, making about 200 normal 
pupils from the whole State who for their part were to agree to teach 
in the public schools for a certain period. President Newlin begins 
with the premise that the whole matter resolved itself into the simple 
question whether the public school should be supplied with compe- 
tent or incompetent teachers; whether the children should be well 
taught or imperfectly instructed. Then after reviewing the origin 
and growth of normal schools in Europe and America he presents his 
arguments in form as follows : 

1. That it is obligatory upon every State in this Republic to give 
to all her children a good education, by the establishment and sup- 
port of good common schools. 

2. That a State can not have good schools without well- trained 
and competent teachers. 

3. That the only way to secure a supply of well-qualified teachers 
is by the establishment of normal schools. 

It is evident that the realization of the necessity for normal schools 
was growing in the State. The school was not immediately estab- 
lished, but all of these efforts had their effect. In 1859 a petition 
was presented to the assembly praying the establishment of a "free 
college and normal school." The committee to whom it was referred 
deemed such a move inexpedient at the time — 

inasmuch as the proposed establishment has not been fully and fairly before the 
minds of the people of the State. Your committee being themselves favorably im- 
pressed, toward the plan proposed, doubt not that the people of the State will, when 
the. subject is fully canvassed and presented to them, extend like favor to it. 

. They proposed that a committee of six be appointed to draw up a 
bill, that it be published in three newspapers in the State and pre- 
sented to the next legislature. 2 

What then was the educational status of Delaware in 1861 when 
the first State law went into effect? Unfortunately there are no 
complete statistics covering all phases of education, and under the 
system then in vogue in the State there could be none. In the 

1 See p. 7, where reference is given to ch. 43 of the Revised Code of 1852, which, in dealing with Delaware 
College, sec. 5 provides that there shall be established a normal school "connected with the college for the 
preparation of teachers." Pupils were to be admitted from the district schools at reduced rates on their 
pledge to teach one year. 

2 H. J., 1859, p. 301. 



72 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 



absence of fuller statistics use must be made of the scanty collections 
found in the censuses of 1840, 1850, and 1860. These follow on this 
page. To these may be added the statistics in the available auditor's 
reports between 1830 and 1860. The auditor was the responsible 
accounting officer to whom reports on the financial dealings of the 
schools were sent and the only one who had in any sense the power 
of reviewing the financial doings of the local district school commis- 
sioners. The powers of the auditor were ample for any inquiry he 
might deem proper, but his term of office was short and if not reap- 
pointed he must resign it into new hands. 1 The figures of the audi- 
tor are both imperfect and incomplete; they are not uniform and 
the periods covered are not all of the same length, but, as they repre- 
sent substantially all the statistical material for the period that is 
available from State sources, they are printed for what they are 

worth. 2 

Statistics of education in Delaware. 





1840 


1850 


1860 


Colleges: 

Number 


1 


2 

16 
144 

$17,200 
$1, 200 


1 


Teachers 


8 


Pupils 


23 


90 


Annual income, total 


$9,500 


From endowment 










From other sources 




$16,000 


$9,500 






Academies and other schools: 

Number 


20 


65 

94 

2,011 

$47,832 
$225 


40 


Teachers 


101 


Pupils 


764 


1,957 


Annual income, total 


$47,462 


From endowment 




$400 


From taxation 




$400 


From public funds 




$1 
$47,606 


$422 


From other sources 




$46,240 








Public schools: 

Number. 


152 


194 

214 

8,970 

14,216 

187 

$43,861 


256 


Teachers 


296 


Pupils (apparently average attendance) 


3 6, 924 


11,736 


Pupils by families (apparently total enrollment) 


18,672 






250 


Annual income, total 




$67,847 


From endowment • 




$500 


From taxation 




$14,422 

$27,753 

$1,686 

10,181 

5,645 

404 

4 
10,250 


$32,359 


From public funds 




$29,020 


From other sources 




$5,968 


Illiterates over 20, total 


M,832 


13,169 


Free colored 


6,508 


Foreign 




1,666 


Libraries: 

Public ... 




64 


Volumes 




61,100 


School. . 




Volumes 






100 


Sunday school and church 




12 

2,700 

1 

5,000 

17 

17,950 

10 

7,500 
421,200 


48 






20,270 






1 


Volumes ... 




7,000 






114 


Total volumes 




88.470 


Newspapers: 

Number . 










16,144 


Annual 




1,010,776 









1 See governor's message, January, 1847, in H. J., 1847, p. 20. 2 See Table 3, at end. 

3 Of these, 1,571 were "at public charge." The entry under this heading in 1840 was "primary and com- 
mon schools." 
* White only. 



Chapter IV. 

THE FIRST STATE TAXATION FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 

1861-1875. 



The original idea in Judge Hall's bill, which became the school 
law of 1829, was individual and neighborhood cooperation. It was 
absolutely and entirely voluntary; there was no supervision by State 
or county; there was no legal requirement, no compulsion by the 
State, for the proposal to levy a tax which appeared in the original 
draft of the bill was omitted in the enacted law. The schools to be 
established were denominated "free schools," but it was a curious 
freedom, for "free" meant that their patrons and supporters were 
free to support them well or ill, or not support them at all, as most 
appealed to their desires and interests. But this phase of the move- 
ment broke down the first year. It was soon seen that voluntary 
contributions could not be depended on to support the schools if 
they were to exist at all, and as early as 1830 a State law was passed 
permitting the school districts to vote a local tax on themselves if 
they saw fit. This remained the law until 1861 and was a step in 
advance, but it had fatal objections: The local school district was 
the unit of taxation; the tax when voted was purely local; it applied 
only to the local school district and was to be voted each year. 
The result of this unfortunate provision has been narrated already. 
There began at once to grow up two parties who differed radically 
on the administration of schools. The conservatives advocated 
the status quo. They wanted no change, little or no State inter- 
ference, and as much liberty of individual action and school district 
initiative as possible. On the other hand the more aggressive party, 
whom we may call, by way of contrast, the progressives, wanted a 
stronger central control for the purpose of supervision and direction 
in the matter of taxation. Between the two ideals the sentiment of 
the State swung back and forth for a generation, but during most 
of this time, despite the activity of the conservatives, and in spite 
of their much writing on the subject, public sentiment more or less 
steadily approached the idea of a centralized State control. After 
much agitation the beginnings of such a State law were finally 
attained in 1861. This was the first general State law on the subject 
of taxation for public-school education ever passed in the State. 

73 



74 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

I. EDUCATIONAL LEGISLATION, 1861-1875. 

This act, passed March 1, 1861, provides that it should be the duty 
of the school committee in each school district in the month of 
April of each year to assess and levy in each school district in New 
Castle County the sum of $75; in each school district in Kent County, 
$50; and in Sussex County, $30, "to be applied to the support of 
the school of their district, to be assessed, levied, and collected as 
provided in chapter 42 of the Revised Statutes." 1 Any school 
district might levy any additional sum up to $400 after the exact 
amount had been fixed by a majority vote. A majority of tKe voters 
in the district might also levy a sum not to exceed $500 for the purpose 
of building a schoolhouse, and all sums decided on by majority vote 
were to be levied and collected in the same manner as the minimum 
sums required by the act. 2 

The act of 1861 marks the downfall of one tendency in public 
education in Delaware and the completed evolution of its opposite. 
The act of 1829 required that as much money be raised in the district 
as was due to the district from the school fund. The act of 1830 cut 
this requirement in half, and the act of 1837 reduced it to $25. This 
tendency of the voter to reduce the requirements on himself to the 
lowest limits was met by another movement which sought to provide 
for the schools by State action. The logical result of this tendency 
was the act of 1861 which to that extent eliminated the wishes of 
the individual voter altogether and made school support automatic. 

Of the law of 1861 Supt. Groves remarks: 

This act of 1861 was a long and grand step in the cause of education in the State. 
By its provisions no child was to be deprived of an opportunity of attending school 
or of securing a common -school education, throwing the responsibility entirely upon 
the parent for any neglect. The State fully measured up to her power and responsi- 
bility by her action in providing for the education of her subjects. That this avenue 
should not be closed, wherein the future citizen and voter might allege that an educa- 
tion was impossible, she plainly indicated by her provisions. Further, she declared 
that it were better to build schoolhouses, employ teachers, and maintain schools than 
enlarge the almshouses and prisons; that the amount of illiteracy should be smaller, 
and that fraud in the ballot, with covered head, should take its place behind the intel- 
ligent voter. Before this date it was indeed a critical period annually on the first 
Saturday in April for the youth of the State. Fathers, anxious and considerate for 
the welfare of their children, with nervous tread and painful forebodings, wended 
their way yearly to the school meeting. The State herself was in suspense and awe, 
awaiting the result of the actions of her subjects. The weal or woe of society hung 
trembling in the balance, to be decided by the day's action. 3 

i This was the Revised Code of 1852, then in use. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1861, ch. 70. Several other laws were passed at this session which were educational 
in character (chs. 58, 100): One provided for the building of a schoolhouse (ch. 54); one for the publication 
of the act of 1861; and another voted $157.32 for the liquidation of an unpaid bill for printing which still 
hung over the late New Castle school convention (ch. 132). 

» Groves, J. H.: History of Free Schools of Delaware, in 5th An. Rep. Supt. Free Schools, 1880, pp. 49-50. 



THE FIRST STATE TAXATION FOll PUELIC SCHOOLS. 75 

It is perhaps best at this point to trace the subsequent legislative 
fortunes of the public schools down to 1875, when a new general 
school law marked another step forward and started the system on a 
career of real State-wide development. There was of course but 
little educational legislation during the war period and this little was 
local in character. After the return of peace the law of this period 
of most general significance was the act of 1867 which chartered, as a 
private institution, the Delaware State Normal University, whose 
creation will be noticed later. With this exception practically all 
the educational legislation between 1861 and 1875 was essentially 
local in character. In this predominantly local legislation, however, 
there can be traced certain tendencies which were now making them- 
selves felt as never before. These included the further organization 
of town and city systems and the grant of authority to these to bor- 
row money on the public credit either with or without mortgage 
security on property already owned by the school. 1 This tendency 
was not confined to the larger cities, but seems to have permeated 
the whole educational system. The stronger and more ambitious 
school districts were given more freedom of initiative in one of two 
ways. If so disposed they were permitted to exceed the $400 limit 
set by the act of 1861 in the matter of local voluntary taxation. The 
first of these acts seemed to have been that of February 13, 1867 (ch. 
141), which allowed School District No. 78, in New Castle County, 
to raise $800; in some cases the amount thus raised by taxation was 
as much as $1,500. 2 Such acts were euphemistically called acts for 
relief and they appeared from year to year. 3 When taxation was not 
available or insufficient these smaller districts might also borrow 
with or without mortgage. 4 

When the action of the legislature on similar questions presented 
by the Wilmington schools in the fifties is recalled, the stride toward 
modern methods is seen to have been tremendous. 

Another development of this period was that which took the more 
or less disjointed, fragmentary, and independent school districts that 
centered in and about the towns and villages, apparently including 
in some cases the older institutions of private origin and reorganized 
them as a single public-school system. This new system sometimes 
continued to bear the ante bellum name of academy, but more often 
distinctly proclaimed itself as the public-school system. The con- 
solidated school was thus incorporated and given authority to collect 
sufficient taxes for the pay of teachers and for schoolhouses. In this 
way the town and city schools of the State began to make progress. 

1 See Wilmington under acts of 1863, 1869, 1871, and 1873. 

2 Ch. 395, laws of 1873. 

3 See chs. 427 and 428, laws of 1869; chs. 44, 45, 47, and 51, laws of 1871; chs. 396, 400, 401, 403, 404, and 406, 
laws of 1873; ch. 44, laws of 1875. 

* See ch. 140, laws of 1867; chs. 429 and 430, laws of 1869; ch. 402, laws of 1873. 



76 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

New Castle seems to have been the first of the smaller cities to in- 
augurate this scheme of development. In this way the Dover 
Academy was reorganized in 1867 (ch. 180) and Milton Academy in 
1869 (ch. 484). These institutions were often both primary and 
secondary schools, and in some cases at least, as was the case with the 
Dover public schools, under the act of March 9, 1875 (ch. 42), it was 
still possible to provide for a deficit by a rate bill levied on parent or 
guardian and collected as other taxes. Following these precedents, 
in 1875 (chs. 52 and 53) the school districts in Delaware City and 
Lewes were consolidated into town systems. Neither of these laws, 
however, was a good one, for Delaware City within certain limits went 
back to the old principle of letting the voters decide what the tax 
should be and both provided for school rates, but the weakness of 
these acts is perhaps atoned for by the better law given to New Castle 
the same year (ch. 54). This town received a charter for 20 years for 
its board of education, which was put in full charge of the schools and 
authorized to fix, up to $4,000, the amount to be raised for education, 
and there were to be no school rates. 

The legislature continued the business of creating new districts, 1 
and homes and farms were regularly transferred by legislative 
enactment from one district to another. 2 Thus it would appear that 
in this State centralization worked by contraries. A State-wide law 
for a general school tax was secured only after a struggle of a gen- 
eration, but the organization of a new district in any county or the 
transfer of John Doe from district A to district B for the sake of 
greater personal convenience was a matter of such grave concern that 
it commanded the attention of the whole State. 

In these ways did the public educational sentiment of Delaware 
begin to again find the voice which had been stilled by war, although 
there was as yet no central authority to whom reports might be made 
and whose duty it was to preserve and publish such reports. An 
effort to secure such was made in 1867 when a bill entitled "An act 
to provide for the appointment of a State school superintendent and 
a board of school examiners for this State" was introduced into the 
house on March 6. It passed the house, but failed in the senate. 3 

Notwithstanding this failure in legislation, the friends of educa- 
tion were not cast down. An educational mass meeting was called 
to be held in Dover on December 23, 1867, its purpose being "for a 
mutual interchange of opinions; to receive and discuss suggestions of 
improvements in the law." The meeting was in session two days, 

i See chs. 423, 424, 425, laws of 1869; chs. 50, 52, laws of 1871; ch. 398, laws of 1873; ch. 45, laws of 1875, and 
later. 
2 See chs. 53, 181, laws of 1871; ch. 399, laws of 1873; chs. 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, laws of 1875, and later, 
a H. J., 1867, pp. 433, 456, 505; S. J., 1867, p. 389. 



THE FIRST STATE TAXATION FOR PURLIC SCHOOLS. 77 

and its u proceedings were conducted with signal unanimity, harmony, 
and good feeling." A preliminary meeting had been held on Novem- 
ber 9, 1867, and the call for a State-wide meeting had been issued 
by Kent County. The meeting in December called itself a State 
educational convention; many ladies and gentlemen were present, 
mainly from Kent and New Castle Counties, with a few from Sussex. 
The speakers included T. Clarkson Taylor, of Wilmington, and J. P. 
Wickersham, of Pennsylvania. No report on Mr. Wickersham's 
address has been seen, but the Wilmington Daily Commercial for 
December 31, 1867, contains a summary of that of Mr. Taylor. The 
larger purt of this address is a plea for more education in general and 
for a better system in Delaware in particular. The defects of the 
existing law were considered. These included the method of raising 
school funds over and above the taxes provided by law, for the 
district was still allowed to vote annually on the supplementary 
amounts to be raised. The results of this provision were unfortu- 
nate, because progressive districts went forward and indifferent ones 
did not. There was no general school head, and therefore no unity 
of school action; there was no standard of qualification of teachers, 
and the general law was entirely inadequate. He suggested that 
each district be required to levy enough tax to keep the schools open 
for at least four months (some demanded eight months) before any 
appropriations might be made to them from the school fund. These 
taxes should be levied, collected, and disbursed by school commis- 
sioners in each hundred and town district, who were to be substituted 
for the commissioners of each school district and were to have also 
general care of the schools. Mr. Taylor asked that a State superin- 
tendent be appointed; that county superintendents examine teachers 
and schools, hold institutes, etc., and that there should be provision 
by law for good school buildings, grounds, furniture, and apparatus. 1 
Uniformity of textbooks was also urged by the convention, but the 
question of school libraries was laid on the table. 

At least two results came from this meeting. It served as a sort of 
school institute for the teachers of Kent, who later effected a formal 
organization and agreed to meet again at Smyrna in April; in accord 
.with the general sense of the convention a committee was appointed 
to draft a general school code, expressive of the changes desired in 
the existing school system. The committee reported to another 
meeting held July 13, 1868, changes and additions to the school law 2 
then in force. These alterations were embodied in what was called 
"The new school law." This was presented to the general assembly 

i Wilmington (Del.) Daily Commercial, Dec. 24, 31, 1867. 

2 The Commercial reports that the attendance on this meeting was small and that another was called 
to meet in December. See issue for July 15, 1868. 



78 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

of 1869 and its passage urged, but in vain. 1 Similar efforts were 
made in 1871 and 1873, but with the same result. 

As illustrating the desires and ideals of the period may be quoted 
the statements of Dr. J. E. Clawson in 1871, with his list of " par- 
ticulars in which our public school system needs reform," and the 
educational bill brought forward in 1873. These two help much to 
explain the evolution of the law of 1875. Dr. Clawson said: 

The voting for tax or no tax at the annual school election should be abandoned, 
and the amount of tax necessary to keep each school in the county open, at least six 
months in the year, should be levied and collected in the same manner as other county 
taxes. The appropriations from the State might be used to keep the school going 
for a longer time. 

Each county should have a superintendent, whose duty should be to visit each 
school in the county as often as possible, and in connection with the district officers, 
whenever practicable, in order to excite an interest in the community on the subject 
of education, make suggestions to the teachers as to the best modes of teaching and 
governing schools, and to the commissioners as to the construction, ventilation, 
warming, and furnishing school buildings; to examine and furnish with certificates 
persons properly qualified to teach; to make an annual report to a State superintendent 
* * * and hold county teachers' institutes, etc. 

There should be also a State superintendent, who should prepare 
suitable blank forms, receive reports, make a biennial report, and 
recommend legislation. This officer and the three county superin- 
tendents, with an additional State officer who should act ex officio, 
might form a State educational board who would recommend a 
uniform system of textbooks and consider educational interests in 
general. It was thought that adjustments to the system in use 
might be made without appreciable cost to the taxpayers. 2 

The educational bill which was proposed in 1873, but failed of 
enactment, may be summarized as follows. 3 It was entitled "An 
act to amend the several acts relating to free schools in this State." 
It provided for the election of county and State boards of education; 
the governor was to appoint a county superintendent for each county 
and to require an annual report on the schools to the legislature. 
It provided for careful supervision; ordered the school commis- 
sioners to raise a certified annual tax and made them personally 
responsible for the amount; provided for the examination and cer- 
tification of teachers by the county superintendents and authorized 
the establishment of colored schools by the colored taxables in any 
district in the same manner as the white schools were then organized. 

1 The Wilmington Daily Commercial, in its issue for Mar. 15, 1871, says that the Teachers' Association of 
Kent County late in 1868 appointed three men to draft a school bill. This bill was presented to the as- 
sembly, which "treated it with little better than silent contempt, and here the clamor for reform for awhile 
ceased and the Teachers' Association of Kent County died a natural death." It intimates also that politics 
was at the bottom of this failure, for it adds that two of the men who drafted the bill were Democrats: 
" They were not afraid that a reform school law would turn white men black or black men white." 

2 See Normal School Advocate, vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 5-6. See also an argument in favor of establishing normal 
schools in 4th An. Rep., Delaware State Normal University, 1869-70, pp. 49-53. 

■• Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1873, pp. 50-52. 



THE FIRST STATE TAXATION FOR PUBLIC SCHOOLS. 79 

The administrative work of the schools was placed in the hands 
of the county board who heard appeals, formed new districts, pro- 
vided textbooks at cost, and received reports from the county super- 
intendent, who was their agent. His main duty was to visit the 
schools, and to make reports on all phases of the work. They were 
to be paid $1,200 per annum. Every district was required to raise 
at least $75 from taxes; funds from whites and blacks were to be 
kept separate; and the negroes were to receive all the taxes paid 
by them. 

The bill as proposed in 1873 failed, but, as will be seen later, 
prepared the way for more successful action in 1875. 

II. THE DELAWARE STATE NORMAL UNIVERSITY, 1866-1871. 

The first law of general significance after the war period was the 
act of January 23, 1867, which provided a charter for the Delaware 
State Normal University. 1 This was organized as a private institu- 
tion on November 19, 1866, because of the necessity for an institu- 
tion " wherein students might receive a professional education, 
which should peculiarly qualify them for instructing and disciplining 
youth." It was commenced without aid from the State and remained 
a private institution to the end. Strictly its history does not belong 
in these pages, but it sought to render public service and is admitted 
for the sake of the service rendered and because of the influence 
exerted by it in drawing public attention to the needs of the public 
schools. 

It began its work without State patronage and without endowment 
save the value of some 20 scholarships which had been subscribed 
for in advance. It received with its charter authority to hold 
property up to $100,000, together with the usual powers of a corpora- 
tion. The trustees included John C. Harkness, who became its 
president, Dr. Caleb Harlan, its vice president, Dr. John A. Brown, 
James Bradford, Allen Gawthorp, Judge Willard Hall, who in other 
days had so strenuously opposed the normal school idea, Howard 
M. Jenkins, and others, 28 in all. 

Besides the normal-school course the institution provided for a 
business education and had a department in which teachers were pre- 
pared for teaching the classics, modern languages, and the higher 
mathematics in the academies and high schools. Passing over the 
other departments, it appears that for admission to the normal 
course the candidate must be 14 years of age, of good health and good 
moral character, and able to pass an examination in reading, spelling, 
penmanship, arithmetic, grammar, and geography. The course 
covered three years and besides the usual high-school branches 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1867, ch. 279. The act itself is not printed in the session laws for that year, but may 
be found in the third annual report and catalogue of the Delaware State Normal University, 1869, p. 9. 



80 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

required school government, principles of education, theory and prac- 
tice of teaching, school economy, mercantile calculations, commercial 
rules, bookkeeping, business correspondence, and extemporaneous 
speaking. There was also work in instrumental and vocal music. 
On completion of the normal course the degree of bachelor of school 
teaching might be conferred, and this degree might be followed by 
that of master after three years of successful practice. 

During the first year there was a faculty of 6 men, 1 woman, and 1 
vacancy; 76 pupils were registered, of whom 26 were women; 19 
persons attended the evening sessions. In 1869 there were 2 gradu- 
ates, 4 in 1870, and 4 in 1871. At one time the attendance was as 
high as 188; in 1870-71 there were 86 students, of whom 27 were 
women. 

In May, 1870, the board of trustees issued a circular — 

setting forth the inefficient and disastrous condition of public education in the State 
of Delaware, and recommending, as immediate remedies, the establishment of a State 
normal school, the office of State superintendent, and a teachers' institute in each 
county for two weeks annually. 

They proposed to evolve into a State Normal and Polytechnic 
University, and for this purpose were then undertaking to raise from 
$50,000 to $100,000; but while this work was going on harmoniously 
and hopefully and after more than $40,000 had been raised for this 
purpose, their work was brought to a sudden close by a repeal of their 
charter on March 29, 1871 (ch. 153), " without any mentioned reason 
or cause." 1 

The causes of this repeal it is of no advantage to present. It is 
sufficient to say that they go back to the circular issued in May, 1870, 
by the State Normal University. Certain statements contained in 
^his circular were reprinted in the Annual Report of the United 
States Commissioner of Education for 1870, came under the eye of one 
of the United States Senators from Delaware, and were regarded by 
him as a misrepresentation of the real facts. The matter was aired 
in the Senate, with the result that the offending statements in the 
Report of the Commissioner of Education were cut out and the 
charter of the Delaware State Normal University was repealed by the 
legislature. 2 

Those who would investigate the matter for themselves will find 
the sources in detail in the Congressional Globe and in the various 
issues of the Wilmington Daily Commercial. 3 

i See catalogues and reports, first to fifth (1866-1871), in Bureau of Education, and Powell's Hist, of Ed. 
in Delaware, p. 164. See also Barnard's Jour, of Ed., XVII, 807. 

2 "An act to repeal ch. ,279, vol. 13, of Delaware laws."— H. J., 1871, p. 508. Mar. 28 the bill "was read " 
and "Rule 12 was, by unanimous consent, suspended and the bill just read was read a second time by its 
title" (pp. 533-4). 

a See the discussion in the Congressional Globe, 41 C, 3 S., pp. 1078, 1100,1131,1132-35, 1418, Feb. 9-20, 1S71, 
and in the Wilmington Daily Commercial for March and'April, 1871, especially Mar. 3, 15. 27, 30, 31, and 
Apr. 4, 7, 10. See also the first edition of the Report of the Commissioner of Education for 1870, pp. 103 
and 105, and compare that edition with the second issue. 



THE FIRST STATE TAXATION" FOR PURLIC SCHOOLS. 81 

It is evident, however, that the discussion in the United States 
Senate and in the Delaware newspapers served a purpose in awakening 
the citizens of the State to a clearer realization of the situation. Thus, 
" Mutual Friend," who writes from Milford, Kent County, to the 
Wilmington Daily Commercial for April 7, 1871, says that the school 
system was "not whaj it should be," for " education to be general 
must be free; and to be free it must be fostered by the State." This 
end, he claimed, was not accomplished by the laws of Delaware. 
There were, he thought, probably 20 school districts in Kent and Sus- 
sex Counties that had not had a free school in the last year; that 
under the system in use it was possible to have men on school boards 
who could not read or write, and " this, to our personal knowledge, has 
frequently happened." 

The discussion was often bitter and perhaps sometimes unjust. 
There are intimations also that there was not only class consciousness, 
but class hostility, as when a correspondent of the Wilmington Daily 
Commercial (Apr. 7, 1871) charged that in Milton and Milford the 
upper and wealthier class — the " broadcloth" class — who were able 
to educate their own children in private institutions, were for that 
reason opposed to taxation for the public schools. The religious 
question also came up at times, as was the case in 1867, when the 
Roman Catholic authorities of Wilmington asked the assembly to 
allow certain church schools to be taken under State control. 1 Dur- 
ing this same year (1867) "An act to prevent the improper distribu- 
tion of the school fund of this State" was introduced in the house, 
where it passed, but failed in the Senate. 2 The reason for the 
introduction of this bill has not been discovered. 

That the closing of the Delaware State Normal University was felt 
throughout the State is indicated by the effort to supply its place. In 
1873 the assembly was called on to dispose of the land-scrip fund, which 
was then beginning to accumulate. By an act passed on March 27 of 
that year it directed that $3,000 per annum for two years should be 
paid out of that fund to Delaware College, and in consideration of the 
receipt of this fund the college was required to — 

provide free instruction of a suitable character for 10 students from each county of this 
State whenever such students on presenting themselves for admission shall obligate 
themselves to teach in the free schools of the State for not less than one year. 3 

In 1875 an effort was made to reenact and continue the act of 
1873, and a bill was introduced for this purpose. The bill passed 
the senate, but was defeated in the house May 25, 1875. 4 

1 See H. J., 1867, pp. 586-89. On one occasion at least this religious question had come up before. In 1847 
the assembly chartered St. Mary's College, at Wilmington. There was immediately presented to the legis- 
lature a petition to repeal the charter. The petition was refused. The report refusing the petition may be 
read in H. J., 1847, pp. 287-289. 

2 H. J., 1867, pp. 443, 464, 500, 612. 
8 Delaware laws, 1873, ch. 408. 

4 See H. J., 1875, pp. 373, 745. 

93106—17 6 



82 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

III. PROGRESS DURING THE PERIOD. 

Taken as a whole it may be truthfully said that there was little 
legislation of general educational significance between 1861 and 
1875. There are even indications that it was felt to be necessary 
to approach this question with more or less caution. For some years 
the subject of education had given place in the* governor's message to 
weightier problems, and when in 1871 Gov. Gove Salisbury returned 
to the subject he felt it proper to apologize to the assembly for his 
remarks on education because ' ' changes in long-established and well- 
understood laws * * * should not be made incautiously or without 
mature consideration." He then suggested that changes were 
needed and — 

that some superintendence should be had by the State, through a legally authorized 
agent, over this whole subject; * * * the duties of those intrusted with this power 
should be clearly denned by law and their performance strictly enjoined. 1 

If these cautious suggestions of the governor are to be taken as 
the measure of official enthusiasm, it will be seen that private indi- 
viduals had more highly developed ideals and were more boldly 
aggressive in advocating their views. Witness the list of " particu- 
lars in which our public school system needs reform," published by 
Dr. J. E. Clawson in June, 1871, and already quoted. 

But after all, the most important question in connection with this 
period is not theory but actual accomplishment under and as a result 
of the act of 1861. This is a question much easier in the asking 
than in the answering, and in reply but two sources may be used, 
the census of 1870 and the auditor's reports of 1861-1875, which 
give substantially the same class of figures with more detail. In 
the absence of any annual State school reports, such statistical matter 
as is available is welcomed gladly. 

For the year ending June 1, 1870, the census reports that out of a 
total population of 125,015 and a school population of 40,807 (5 to 
18 years of age) there attended school 19,965, of whom 18,770 were 
white and 1,195 were colored. There were 19,356 persons over 10 
years of age who could not read and 23,100 who could not write, 
11,280 of these being white and 11,820 colored. 

At that time the schools of all classes, from primary to college, 
public and private, numbered 375. They had 510 teachers, of whom 
147 were men and 363 were women, with 19,575 pupils. The total 
income of these institutions was $212,712; of this sum $120,429 was 
from taxation and public funds and $92,283 from other sources, 
including tuition. 

The public schools numbered 326 of all classes and were divided 
as follows: One normal school (the Delaware State Normal Univer- 

iH. J., 1871, p. 19. 



THE FIRST STATE TAXATION FOR PURLIC SCHOOLS. 83 

sity), with 1 man and 6 women teachers, 100 pupils, and $4,000 
income; 12 graded common schools, with 61 women teachers, 2,935 
pupils, and $44,755 income, of which $41,455 came from public 
sources. There were 313 ungraded public schools, with 106 men and 
214 women teachers, 13,800 pupils, and a total income of $78,974 from 
public sources. 

There were reported also of private schools, "classical, professional, 
and technical: " Eleven colleges and academies, with 32 men and 31 
women teachers, 859 pupils, and $53,550 of income; 38 other "not 
public" institutions are also reported (including day and boarding, 
parochial, and charity schools), with 59 teachers, 1,881 pupils, and 
an income of $31,433 from private sources. 

The detailed statistics of the public schools in the three counties, 
both financial and personal, as recorded in the annual reports of the 
State auditor are given later in tabular form. 1 

It would appear that the official heads of the State were not during 
these years entirely indifferent to or forgetful of their duty to the 
schools. 

1 See Table 3, at end. 



Chapter V. 

THE STATE SYSTEM: ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES 
AND WILLIAMS, 1875-1887. 



At the opening of the assembly in January, 1875, Gov. James 
Ponder, in reviewing the results of the earlier public-school efforts, 
declared that in the 40 years of its existence the school system had 
been of " incalculable advantage" in furnishing the means of primary 
education to the youth of the State. He thought, however, that these 
advantages had been gradually impaired by the multiplication of 
school districts: 

More than double the number of school districts originally established now exist in 
the State and in some localities it is difficult to maintain good schools for any great 
period of the year owing to the small number of pupils 1 living in the district. 2 

It would seem, however, that Gov. Ponder did not grasp the full 
significance of the school situation. The bill which came up for 
consideration at this session of the assembly indicated first of all that 
the idea of centralization in public school administration was making 
strides in the State, and that the people had come to realize as never 
before the failure of the earlier decentralized, individualistic system. 

The act of 1875 did not repeal the original act of 1829, but appeared 
as an amendment to it, gave it a modern interpretation, and when 
compared with the amendment suggested as desirable in June, 1871, 
by Dr. J. E. Clawson 3 and with the bill proposed in 1873, 3 a remark- 
able similarity is observed. As the changes advocated by Dr. 
Clawson had the approval of the faculty of the Delaware State 
Normal University and the bill of 1873 that of the teaching organi- 
zations, it may be safely assumed that the law of 1875 gave satis- 
faction to most if not all of the more progressive educators of the 
State. It would even appear that the act of 1875 was more nearly 
like the suggestions of 1871 than it was like the bill of 1873. 

1 The law provided that when a district was organized there should not he less than 35 pupils in the new 
nor less than that number left in the old district. 

2 H. J., 1875, p. 19. It appears from the reports of the State superintendents for this period that the 
average school district often contained more pupils than could he accommodated in the schoolhouse or 
taught by the teacher. See for instance the third annual report, 1877-1878, p. 44, where it is shown that the 
average number of children "between 5 and 21 years, to each school" in 1877 was 140 in Newcastle, 61 in 
Kent, and 48 in Sussex. 

3 See ante, page 78. 

84 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 85 

A synopsis of the law, ordinarily known as the "New School Law 
of 1875," follows: 

I. THE FREE SCHOOL LAW OF 1875 AND ITS ACCOMPLISHMENTS. 

State superintendent. — A State superintendent was, by this law, 
to be appointed annually by the governor, ' ' to hold his office one year 
or until his successor shall in like manner be appointed." His 
salary was $1,800 per year and his duties were to visit every school in 
the State once a year, noting in a book the modes of discipline, 
government, and plans of instruction in use; to advise with teachers 
as to the best methods for the advancement of their pupils; to examine 
all that may desire to teach; to hold a teachers' institute in each of 
the counties at least once a year, of at least three days' session, for 
imparting information and having a general interchange of views of 
teachers as to the wants of the various schools; to report in writing 
to the governor on the first Tuesday in December in each and every 
year the condition of the schools, and make such recommendations 
and suggestions as he may think proper in regard to a thorough 
completion of the system. 

State board of education. —The president of Delaware College, the 
secretary of state, State auditor, and State superintendent were 
organized into a State board of education. 1 The president of Dela- 
ware College, by -virtue of his office, was president of the board and 
the auditor was secretary of the same. The latter officer received a 
salary of $100 per annum. The other members received no pay. 
The duties of the board were to determine what textbooks should be 
used in the schools; to issue blanks and forms for distribution to the 
local commissioners, and to demand returns to be made in pursuance 
thereof; to hear all appeals and determine finally all matters of con- 
troversy between commissioners and teachers. 

Teachers. — All teachers were required to have a certificate from the 
State superintendent, countersigned by the county treasurer in the 
county issued upon the payment of $2, said certificate setting forth 
his or her proficiency in the common English branches; to make out 
and hand to the commissioners of the district a report setting forth 
the whole number of pupils attending school during the quarter, 
the textbooks used and branches taught. 

Revenue. — The manner of raising revenue was the same as in the 
old law, except that in Sussex County each school district was required 
to raise by taxation not less than $60 annually, instead of $30, as 
formerly, and in New Castle and Kent counties $100, instead of $75 
and $50 as formerly. 

In 1879 an amendment was made to the act of 1875 requiring the 
superintendent to issue, as occasion demanded, three grades of 

1 Changed by ch. 369, laws of 1881, so that it consisted of the secretary of State, the president of Delaware 
College, and the State superintendent. The assistant superintendent became secretary of the board. 



86 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

certificates, known as the first grade, good for three years ; the second, 
for two years; and the third, for one year. He was also granted the 
privilege of issuing temporary permits to teachers to teach for 30 
days, when in his judgment the interests of education required it. 

The act of 1875, of which the above is a synopsis, did not abrogate 
the free school law of 1829, but merely supplemented it. 

The first " superintendent of free schools of the State of Delaware" 
was James H. Groves. He was appointed April 13, 1875, and served 
until April 13, 1883, when he was succeeded by Thomas N. Williams, 
who served until April 13, 1887, when under the act of April 7, 1887, 
the superintendency was abolished. In 1881 the office of assistant 
State superintendent was created. 1 This officer was directed by law 
"to aid the State superintendent in the performance of his duties" 
and for this end was subject to his direction. The position was filled 
by the appointment of Henry C. Carpenter, who served from April 
13, 1881, till April 13, 1887, when this office was also abolished. 

In his estimate of Groves, Powell 2 says that he " proved to be a 
well-equipped, enthusiastic officer, and a very important factor in 
the success of the new law. He thought the true function of public 
education is to prepare the average man for the duties of citizen- 
ship." Judge Conrad calls him u an efficient organizer." He " filled 
his position with great credit. His organization of the teachers' 
institutes, and the remarkable tact displayed by him in the manage- 
ment of them, resulted in their success from the beginning." 3 

The remainder of this section will be devoted to a brief presenta- 
tion of what was accomplished during the administration of Mr. 
Groves and of his successor as State superintendents, so far as those 
results are recorded in the scattered sources of the period. 4 

These annual reports, while brief, are more uniform in their treat- 
ment of subjects than is often the case. Their statistics are very 
incomplete, however, and leave various important subjects, like 
attendance, out of consideration; usually only the figures for every 
other year are presented, and as far as statistics go, it is evident 
that the State officers were s-till thinking in terms of the separate 
counties rather than in those of the State. 

During the 12 years between 1875 and 1887, while the educational 
fortunes of the State were under the direction of a State superin- 
tendent, the same subjects came up again and again for discussion. 
' The questions of most importance were : The examinations of 
teachers and teachers' certificates, supervision or the annual and 

i Laws of Delaware, 1881, ch. 369. 

2 Powell, L. P.: Hist, of Ed. in Delaware, p. 154. 

3 Conrad, H. C: History of Delaware, III, 802. 

* Six annual reports for this period were published: 1875-76, 1877-78, 1879-80, 1881-82, 1883-84, 1SS5-86, 
and biennial reports for 1887-88, 1889-90, 1891-92. For this period the auditor's reports were published 
separately from the assembly journals. In the school law, teachers were instructed under penalty of 
loss of salary to make monthly reports, but no such penalty was provided against district clerks if they 
should fail to pass these reports on to those higher up. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 87 

semiannual visits to the schools by the State superintendent or his 
assistant; teachers' institutes in the various counties and what was 
naturally suggested in that connection — the importance and need of 
a normal school; and the question of uniform textbooks. Other 
subjects that commanded the attention of the superintendents and 
got large representation in their reports were the condition of public 
schools in the cities and towns and statistics of the same; the public 
and semipublic educational work carried on at this period among the 
negro population and specimens of the examinations given appli- 
cants for teachers' certificates. The statistics for this period are to 
be found at the end of this volume. 

The first annual report issued by the State covers the year ending 
April 1, 1876. Perhaps the most important subject of the time was 
the qualification of teachers. Before 1875 the only requirement for 
teaching was the good will of the community. The plan of annual 
examinations of teachers now proposed and enforced was found to 
be of service in raising the standard of qualification. Examinations, 
given partly oral and partly written, included orthography, reading, 
writing, mental and written arithmetic, geography, English gram- 
mar, history of the United States, and the theory and practice of 
teaching. 

The most important duty of the superintendent at this period, 
perhaps, was that of visiting schools. The law required that all 
schools in the State should be visited annually by the superintendent. 
The purpose of the visit was twofold: First, to examine the plan 
of the teacher in his school classification, the number of daily reci- 
tations, the time devoted to each, the number of classes in each 
branch, and method of instruction used and made of government; 
and second, to encourage the teacher in doing what was right and 
proper, to show him how to remedy existing evils, to properly drill 
and to enkindle a manly enthusiasm in the pupils themselves. 

Of the results Supt. Groves says in his first report: 

In most cases the teachers were using the methods used in the schools where they 
were taught. If they had been taught according to the old method reading, writing, 
and ciphering, that was their program. It was reading without any regard to inflec- 
tion, articulation, emphasis, or even a proper regard to the sounds of the oral elements; 
writing, without even so much as a specific supervision of the exercise; arithmetic, 
merely the "ciphering" part. In grammer there was the mere recitation of the text; 
in geography 8 or 10 questions, and "take your seats." There was too much of learn- 
ing lessons and not enough of teaching. * * * In many schools neither grammar 
nor geography 'was taught. Reading, writing, and ciphering formed the sum and 
substance of the daily work. 

By an act of 1881 an assistant State superintendent was appointed, 1 
whose duties were alike in kind and character to those of the super- 
intendent. He also was appointed by the governor for one year, 
was given a salary of $800, and was required to aid the superintendent 

i Ch. 369, law of 1881. 



88 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

in his work. By this action the superintendent was partly relieved 
from the necessity of traveling from school to school and so released 
for the distinctively administrative duties of his office. 

The law of 1875 required that the State superintendent should 
hold an institute in each county for at least three days, "for the pur- 
pose of instructing and assisting teachers in the best mode of teach- 
ing and governing schools and having a general interchange of views 
upon those subjects." The teachers were required to attend and 
occasionally to lose the time, although as a rule they were allowed to 
close their schools for the days the institutes were in session. 1 The 
State superintendent was the responsible officer in charge of the insti- 
tutes and did most of the teaching, although aided now and then by 
lecturers from neighboring States, who did their work without charge, 
and also by local talent, including lawyers, doctors, ministers, and 
educators, who "lent their presence and assistance in the good cause. " 

During the earlier years the institutes were financed entirely from 
the fund collected from teachers in payment for teaching certificates. 
On the earnest recommendation of the State superintendent the 
assembly contributed in 1885 (ch. 445) the sum of $300 annually for 
the use of the institutes, $100 going to each county. In 1887 a 
similar sum of $300 was given for a State teachers' institute. The 
very existence of these institutes suggested constantly and persistently 
the need of a normal school for the State. As something of a substi- 
tute for a normal school there was organized in 1888 a summer school 
for teachers at Smyrna. It was under the direction of Levin Irving 
Handy, county superintendent of Kent. In 1888, 59 students were 
enrolled; in 1889 the number was 60. 

The free school law provided that the State board of education and 
the State superintendent should determine what textbooks were to 
be used in the schools, but they were given at first no power to enforce 
their decision. 2 The result was that many varieties of textbooks still 
appeared; one particular school with 33 pupils could boast of 26 
classes. The difficulty was corrected by the law of 1881 (ch. 369), 
which directed that the State superintendent should purchase all the 
books to be used in the schools, pay for them out of State funds, and 
distribute them to the clerks of the school districts at cost price. 
These were to sell the books at fixed prices to the pupils and cover 
the receipts back into the hands of the State superintendent. This 
law put an additional burden on the clerks without increasing their 
pay and also subjected them to the risk of loss, for under the law they 
were responsible to the superintendent for the books ordered. In 
1885 a five-year adoption period was provided. 3 

1 In 1881 this was made the law. See ch. 369, sec. 9. 

2 An amendment in 1879 (ch. 45) required the school commissioners to certify under penalty that they 
had "adopted and used" the books directed to be used by the State board. 

;i Laws of Delaware, 1885, ch. 446. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 89 

Notwithstanding evident weaknesses the superintendent could say 
in his first annual report that "there is a marked change for the 
better" and that "a genuine interest in public education is gradually 
but persistently overcoming any lingering prejudice to the new order 
of things. The position of public-school teaching is being eunobled 
and elevated." He still felt it necessary, however, to plead for 
more support, for in 1883 there — 

seemed but one thing lacking, namely, the hearty cooperation of parents and school 
commissioners. * * * It is highly important that the school commissioners in 
each district shoHild be workingmen, ready to labor in season and out of season to 
promote the interests of the schools, whether paid or not paid for their services. Hard 
labor is the sine qua non of a good school. 1 

In 1877 Gov. Cochran put himself to the trouble of reviewing with 
some detail the historical development of the idea of free schools in 
this State from 1792 to the date of writing. He also reviewed the 
law of 1875, and in this message and in that of two years later rejoiced 
in the encouraging prospects of the schools. 

In the report for 1878 (third annual) the superintendent declared 
that there had been "a very perceptible improvement in the qualifica- 
tions of the teachers" and attributed this improvement in the main 
to the annual examination of teachers. 

From my personal knowledge, and from careful calculation, I am satisfied that of 
the 462 teachers who were examined and received certificates not more than one-fifth 
of the same could have passed then [1875] the examinations required this year. The 
gradual elevation of the standard of qualifications year by year has been the means 
of inducing a more systematic and accurate study of the branches used in our schools 
and of fitting men and women f Or the responsible duty of training our youth. 

In 1879 the act of 1875 was so amended 3 that it required the 
applicant for the teacher's certificate to answer 60 per cent of the 
questions set on orthography, reading, writing, mental and written 
arithmetic, geography, history of the United States, and English gram- 
mar for a third-grade certificate, good for one year; answering 90 per 
cent secured a second-grade certificate, good for two years; and for 
a first grade there were added to the above, natural philosophy, 
elements of rhetoric, geometry, and algebra. Such certificate was 
good for three years. 

Improvement in the teachers meant naturally an improvement in 
the schools, and in this report the superintendent was able to sug- 
gest the question of graded schools for the more advanced: 

It has been a matter of consideration whether New Castle County is not ready for a 
course of study, year by year, for pupils between the ages of 6 and 16 years. 

In this report also the superintendent urged the necessity of a 
codification of the school laws 3 and that the whole matter of levy- 

1 Seventh An. Rep., 1881-82, p. 9. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1879, chs. 45, 46. 

3 Codification ordered by ch. 369, sec. 10, laws of 1881. 



90 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

ing and collecting the school tax should be left in the hands of the 
levy court commissioners. It will be remembered that the method 
of levying and collecting this tax had not been changed by the act 
of 1875. The irreducible minimum required by the State had been 
increased, however, from $75 to $100 for each school district in New 
Castle and Kent and from $30 to $60 in Sussex. 1 It was in practi- 
cally all cases necessary to raise an additional sum by a popular tax 
levy, and this was now as it had been in the past a source of much 
bickering and confusion. 2 The State teachers' association, which 
had been organized in 1879, at its annual meeting in August, 1880, 
went on record in the matter of this levy. They condemned the 
method in use and petitioned the assembly that school taxation be 
placed a on the same basis as other tax laws of the State." 3 

In many cases school furniture was still in a primitive and there- 
fore chaotic condition, for it had been "made without particular 
reference to school uses." Difficulty was also experienced in per- 
suading school committees to improve their old buildings or under- 
take the construction of new ones. 

In 1881-82 the superintendent reports the situation as particularly 
bad. Several new and quite creditable school buildings had been 
erected. 

Yet what has been done in this direction is only a very small fractional part of what 
ought to have been done. What we need, perhaps, more than anything else, is a 
strong public sentiment in favor of better school accommodations. A majority of 
our school buildings are unfit for the purposes for which they are used. They are 
flimsily constructed, wretchedly arranged, built on small lots and in low places, and 
contribute in no respect to the comfort of the children. Nearly all of them seem to 
have been built without a thought of ventilation. 

But soon after this date conditions began to improve, for in 1883-84 
the superintendent reported that $129,000 was spent in "the erec- 
tion of better and more commodious schoolhouses. Yet this is but 
a small part of the work to be done in this direction." In 1885 and 
1886 more than $125,000 was spent for the same purpose. 

In 1883 there was made to the free schools the first direct appro- 
priation from the State treasury in addition to the State school fund. 
This amounted to $25,000, of which, $10,000 went to New Castle 
County, because of its larger population, while Kent and Sussex 
each received $7,500. In the last two again the sum received was 
divided equally among the districts, 4 but in New Castle it was divided 
in proportion to the school population in the district, 5 while an 

1 In 1881 the requirement was raised to $150 in New Castle and S125 in Kent. There was no change in 
Sussex (see ch. 369). In 1883 (ch. 47) and 1885 (ch. 440) the requirement for Sussex was raised from $60 
to $75. 

2 For example, see Seventh An. Rep. for 1881-82, p. 18. 

3 Report for 1880, p. 14. 

* Modified somewhat as to Kent County by Laws of Delaware, 1885, ch. 442. 
& Laws of Delaware, 1883, ch. 47. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GEOVES AND WILLIAMS. 91 

amendment of 1885 * provided that no district in Sussex County 
should receive any of this fund until it had raised at least $75 by 
taxation. 

In April, 1883, Supt. Groves was succeeded in office by Thomas 
N. Williams. This gave the new superintendent an opportunity to 
review the eight years' work of his predecessor: 

When I entered upon the duties of my office in April, 1883, owing to the efficient 
management of my predecessor, and his worthy assistant, I found that the school had 
been established upon a healthy basis and a most careful supervision has been exer- 
cised. 

The experience of the past year has shown a most satisfactory development and 
growth and has been rewarded by a gratifying measure of success. I can safely say 
that there is a growing interest in the cause of public instruction in our State, which, 
though not so generally active perhaps as we could desire, is nevertheless so much 
more so than formerly that I am convinced our schools are not retrograding but steadily 
and surely advancing. The increase of interest'in our free schools is evidenced by the 
number of beautiful and commodious houses that have been erected during the past 
year in the three counties of the State; the old, comfortless, homemade desks that have 
given place to new and improved school furniture; the willingness with which the 
people have, in many of the towns and rural districts, used their influence to obtain 
sufficient means for procuring good school apparatus and good teachers; and the 
general manifestation on the part of the public of a desire to elevate the standard of 
free education. 

* * * The seeming importance of our free schools has gradually assumed the 
force of a profound conviction. * * * Considered as the growth of 10 years, the 
Delaware system of "free schools " is a most gratifying work. Never before has public 
sentiment been so strong in favor of the support of free public schools as to-day. The 
press of the State is a unit in their favor. The leading men of all parties and all 
religious denominations acknowledge and defend the duty of securing a good common- 
school education to the children of all classes. 

This judgment pronounced by Mr. Williams on the work of his 
predecessor appears to be a fair and not unreasonable estimate of the 
development of the first years under a State system, and the develop- 
ment thus inaugurated by Groves was continued by Williams and 
then by the State board. 

The Delaware State Teachers' Association dates from December 30, 
1875, when it was temporarily organized in Wilmington. Efforts 
had been made to develop such an organization in 1847 and again in 
1854, but with indifferent success. It received permanent organiza- 
tion at Rehoboth on August 28, 1879, and since then has been of 
particular value in encouraging the holding of local educational 
gatherings. About 25 such were organized in 1883-84, mainly in 
Kent and Sussex. They were held in churches, schoolhouses, and 
town halls, and were well attended, and "in several cases in our 
little crossroads educational meetings was laid the foundation of 
what is now a beautiful and attractive school building." 

The evidences of progress were again summarized for 1886. Com- 
modious, houses, good apparatus and good teachers, and a desire to 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1885, ch. 441. 



92 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

elevate the standard were now everywhere visible, but "the want of 
a more active interest" was still holding many districts from advance. 
Another drawback was the frequent change of teachers, and while 
many teachers were improving, "one of the great needs of the State" 
was a normal training school. This led to a somewhat detailed dis- 
cussion by the superintendent on the organization of such an insti- 
tution, but its day was not yet. 

The report for 1886 was the last issued by the State superintendent. 
The next (that for the two years ending Dec. 31, 1888) was issued 
under the auspices of the State board of education, which, under the 
act of 1887, became the administrative head of the State system. 

When consideration is directed away from what was actually 
accomplished under the act of 1875 and is centered on the general 
tendency of school administration during the period, it is possible 
to trace development in two particular directions. These were: (1) 
The unusual development during these years of incorporated town 
and city schools; and (2) the beginning of the State education of 
negro children. These phases of educational growth will now be 
considered. 

II. THE DEVELOPMENT OF INCORPORATED TOWN AND CITY SCHOOLS. 

It will be recalled that the development of the town and city schools 
began practically with the enactment of the free-school law of 1829, 
but that for the next 20 years there was little progress. About 1852, 
as told in an earlier chapter, individual development became possi- 
ble by the enactment of more progressive laws. The consolidation 
of contiguous districts lying within or near the corporate town limits 
began; in many cases, especially under the later acts of incorpora- 
tion, the new consolidated district was allowed to retain the total of 
the shares of the school fund to which each separate district had been 
entitled under the older acts. 1 Their development was further greatly 
advanced by giving them authority to levy taxes over and beyond 
the $300 limit that had been fixed by the law of 1861 or to borrow 
money and secure it by mortgage on school property or by the faith 
of the town. In this way Wilmington and New Castle had made 
much progress in city school evolution, and others, after the close of 
the Civil War, found it of advantage to follow their example. 

This consolidation of outlying neighboring districts, absorption of 
older private systems, and general reorganization under special 
charters, but sometimes without special favors, continued in the 
towns under the new school law of 1875, which did not exempt them 
from the general State law. A change began, however, when an act 
of 1879 2 exempted from the control of the State superintendent and 

> 1881, chs. 365, 366; 1883, chs. 52, 56, 63, 65; 1885, ch. 457. 
2 Laws of 1879, ch. 46. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 



93 



State board of education the incorporated schools of towns and cities : 
"This act shall not apply to any school or school district managed or 
controlled by an incorporated board of education, unless by special 
request of said board." 

This provision first appears in the act of 1879 and is probably 
responsible for the unusual development of incorporated schools 
which took place in the next few years. It is evident that there was a 
considerable rush to attain this condition of semi-independence, for 
in 1883-84 the State superintendent, in protesting against the tend- 
ency of the day, said that the teachers of these incorporated schools 
were not required to attend State examinations or county institutes, 
and he argued that since they availed themselves of State funds they 
should not be exempt from State supervision. 1 

There seems to have been no other legislation during the period 
that concerned incorporated schools in particular; but this large 
degree of local autonomy helped beyond question in their develop- 
ment, although it has made more difficult the task of the historian 
by making reports more complex and less uniform. 

There follows below a table giving such statistics of incorporated 
schools as are available. As is often the case, these are incomplete 
and imperfect. As there was no distribution of money on a popula- 
tion basis, that item is generally omitted. The earlier reports show 
a gradual development in the city and town schools; they continue 
to expand through 1889-90. In the report for 1892 they are 
omitted altogether. 





Statistics of incorporated (i.e. 


zity and town) schools in 


Delaware, 1875-1890 




Year ending- 


Town. 


N 
\s ■ 

l 4 ^ to 

<=> 03 

A* 

§ 

1-3 


© 

m 
P 

O 

A 

o 
o 

DQ 


m 

© 


ft 

o . 

ftp 

p 
o 

■§ 

CO 


P 
| 

"3 

P 


i 

© 

§© 

o3 * 
© 

< 


© 

1 

o 

P 


© 

S3 

t3 

p 
© 

ft 

X 

m 





© >> 

°& 

£ ft 

03 


1- 
© 

0"H 

<B ft 

bo P 

03 ft 


>> 

u 

9| 

© rt 
tuoP 
^ Sh 

gft 


Apr. 


1, 1876 


Dover 


204 
200 
206 
180 
223 
206 
203 
186 


T 


6 

3 

T 


*i*922" 

400 
782 


402 
300 
401 
283 
507 
222 
381 
324 


217 
136 
236 
185 
289 
104 
230 
212 
273 
140 
210 
220 
115 
323 
180 


"$i,*384* 
3,000 

"* 1*291* 
3,614 


$2,753 

1,384 
2,500 
1,850 
3,941 
1,291 
3,110 
2,250 


$10,000 
900 


$6.84 
4.61 
7.50 
6.52 
7.77 
5.81 
8.16 
6.91 


$58. 30 


Apr. 


1, 1878 
1, 1880 

1, 1882 
1, 1884 

1 


Delaware City 

Dover 


36.66 


1 Lewes 


9,000 






Newcastle 

Delaware City 

Dover 






800 

""io'ooo" 




Dec. 










Lewes 

New Castle 




6 


400 






Delaware City 

Dover 


200 
196 
166 
200 
205 
188 


... 3 

... 8 




210 
355 
280 
187 
539 
250 


1,800 


1,360 
2,999 


950 
18,000 


'"8.*84* 


46.66 

40.00 


Dec. 


Lewes 






38.75 


Milford 


Y 
i 


4 
9 
4 




"4," ire" 

1,498 


1,600 
4,145 
1,498 


3,000 


8.55 






Newcastle 

Seaford 


40.00 




4,500 




35.90 




(■Delaware City 






Dover 


197 








458 
300 
186 


260 
240 
103 


"2*268* 
3,150 
4,858 
1,577 


3,731 

*"i,"450* 
4,981 
1,550 


24,700 
10,000 

2,500 
13,000 

6,000 | 


8.14 




Dec. 


Lewes 




6 
3 
9 
4 1 






Milford 






7.80 
9.22 

6.88 






New Castle 

Seaford 


203 
180 


3 


540 358 

350 | 225 | 179 





1 Rep. for 1883-84, p. 31. 



94 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 



Statistics of incorporated (i 


e., city 


and town) schools in Delaware, 1875-1890 — Con. 


Year ending — 


Town. 


a 
1 . 

© 


i 

§ 
O 

o 
A 
o 


1 

o 

8 


e. 

o 

■§ 

CO 


1 

s 


i 

as 

Is 


© 

B 

© 



© 
3 

a 
© 
a 

X 

W 


'o 


> 


b£)3 
® 


Id 

© 3 

■-.!. a 

S&. 




'Delaware City 

Dover 


200 
196 
180 




3 




225 

512 
305 
123 
540 
185 
249 
235 
493 


135 
245 
245 


"$3,"025" 


$2, 914 
5,868 
3,025 


$8,000 
25,000 
10,000 
2,000 
15,000 
10,000 


$9.00 
8.14 






Lewes 


... 


7 
4 
9 






Dec. 31, 1886 


Milford 






New Castle 

Newark 


203 


3 


358 
135 


5,968 
1,450 


5,968 
1,450 
1,422 
1,610 
4,079 














Seaford 
















Delaware City 

Dover 


204 
204 


Y 


4 

8 




157 
251 


2,927 


800 
21,300 








8.36 






Laurel 




Dec. 31,1888 


Lewes 


180 
180 
206 
200 
180 
201 
197 
170 








343 
182 
550 
215 
279 
223 
447 
268 
337 
208 
617 
233 
340 


146 


2,777 


2,387 
975 
5,496 
1,475 
1,744 
1,634 
5,687 
1,710 


9,000 
7,000 

15,000 
8,500 
7,000 
8,000 

21,300 
6,600 
9,100 
7,000 

15, 000 

10,500 
8,000 






Milford 


i 

3 
1 
1 

~2 
1 
1 
1 

T 
i 


4 
9 
4 
4 
4 
9 
5 
7 
4 
9 
4 
5 


"""666" 
300 
450 
260 

'""466" 








New Castle 

Newark 








166 
185 
139 
272 
190 
263 
140 
472 
162 
216 


2,543 
1,769 
2,867 

""3," 257' 








Seaford 


"'8.36' 


$39. 66 




Delaware City 

Dover 


35.75 




Laurel 


38.00 


Dec. 31,1890 


Lewes 




Milford 


202 
200 
200 
184 


"5," 307" 
2,556 
2,788 


1,565 
4,842 
1,550 
3,092 








New Castle 

Newark 


::::::: 


35.55 
35.75 




Seaford 








1 



When attention is turned from the smaller Delaware cities to 
Wilmington, it will be found that the favor which had been granted 
to them by the law of 1879, and which had made them semi-independ- 
ent, had belonged to the larger city in an even larger degree practically 
from the beginning, for in writing the history of any phase of public 
education in Delaware it is soon apparent that the city of Wilmington 
has been educationally a law unto itself, independent of and unre- 
sponsible to the remainder of the State or to its school officers. 1 
This stage of independence was attained at an early period in the 
race for educational development, and has been assiduously main- 
tained, although it does not appear that any effort has been made 
to reduce the city schools from independence to dependence on 
State authority. 

The early history of the development and growth of public schools 
in Wilmington has been given already in an earlier chapter. 2 There 
is little in the story that is spectacular. It is the story of a steady 
educational growth and development, with no mountain peaks and 
few hills that rise above the general level. It may be more accu- 
rately likened to a plain ascending with a gentle but more or less 
uniform slope toward the highlands of educational efficiency. 

The educational development of the city in 1859 may be seen from 
the report of Judge Willard Hall in April, 1859. He says: 

In schoolhouse No. 1 are two schools; one for boys and one for girls. In the boys' 
school are taught reading, writing, orthography, mental and written arithmetic, gra-m- 



1 See Rev. Code, 1915, sec. 2306; based on ch. 67, sec. 31, laws of 1898. 2 See ch. 3, part 4, p. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 95 

mar, composition, geography, history, astronomy, algebra, geometry, and philosophy; 
and in the girls' school the same branches with the exception of geometry and composi- 
tion and the addition of drawing. 

In schoolhouse No. 4 the branches in the boys' department are reading, writing, 
spelling and defining, mental and written arithmetic, and geography, and in the girls' 
department the same branches with the addition of grammar, composition, physical 
geography, history, physiology, philosophy, algebra, and drawing. 

It was about this time also that the schools faced what was perhaps 
the greatest crisis in all their history. The story is told in the report 
of the board for 1861. 

. The city council, on the application of the school board, investigated 
the schools and found that their needs were outrunning their income. 
They asked the general assembly for authority to make a loan. This 
was given by the assembly, conditioned on its approval by popular 
vote, but on taking the vote it was found that the very persons for the 
benefit of whose children the measure was proposed had voted it 
down. The city council then applied to the next assembly to make a 
loan and was refused. 1 

The Civil War was then on and attention was for a time distracted 
from the schools. Before the struggle was over, however, the act of 
February 11, 1863 (ch. 261), permitted the city to borrow $12,000 to 
build a schoolhouse without requiring the school authorities to first 
submit the matter to a vote. In 1869 (ch. 422) they were permitted 
to borrow $25,000 for increased accommodations. In 1871 the char- 
ter of the Wilmington city school board was extended for 20 years 
and was given the fullest powers in the administration and control of 
the city schools (ch. 43) and to borrow $30,000 for new buildings and 
furnishings. (ch. 46). In 1873, also, $30,000 was borrowed (ch. 407). 

Since that time the city has borrowed what it felt to be necessary 
to advance the interests of the schools. The city also anticipated 
the State in the assistance rendered toward the education of the 
newly enfranchised slaves and took up the subject with an honest 
interest. In 1866 was inaugurated the movement which resulted the 
next year in the organization of the Delaware Association for the 
Moral Improvement and Education of the Colored People. In 1869 
the city contributed $5,000 toward the erection of a schoolhouse 
which had been undertaken by the Freedman's Bureau and in 1871 
gave $1,000 toward the support of their schools, which up to that 
time had been supported mainly out of private contributions. This 
contribution was renewed in 1872. In 1873 the Howard School 
became a part of the city system, and before long the absorption of all 
r the colored schools was accomplished. 

The organization of the city high school was begun about 1870, the 
first high-school class being graduated in 1875. The course then 
consisted of three years. In 1877 the general organization was as 

i Wilmington School Report, 1875-76, p. 57. 



96 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

follows: The primary schools were divided into 12 grades, which were 
intended to occupy 5 months each; in the grammar school 8 grades 
covered 4 years, so that the whole time required for preparation for 
the high school required 10 years. During the school year 1903-4 the 
high-school course was extended from 3 to 4 years and "for the first 
time in the history of the school pupils were permitted some choice in 
the selection of the studies which they wished to pursue." In recent 
years the curriculum has been divided, and there are now offered 
three courses of 4 years each: Classical, Latin-scientific, and general. 
There is a teachers' training school, and a department of manual 
training was opened in 1899. Then followed industrial training and 
domestic economy. Medical inspection has been introduced, and 
compulsory attendance is now enforced. The total expense of the 
high school in 1911 was $39,144.14. 

In 1888 the Howard School — named in honor of Gen. O. O. Howard, 
who through the Freedman's Bureau was instrumental in its first 
organization — was evolved from its humble beginnings into a colored 
high school. A three-year high school was established at first, but 
was by degrees developed into a full-fledged four-year course, the 
first graduates in the latter being the class of 1911. This school con- 
tains also a normal department for the education of colored teachers 
and a manual training department. The total expenses of the 
colored schools of Wilmington, including the primary, grammar, and 
high-school grades, was $52,228.72 in 1911. 

Taken as a whole, the schools of Wilmington have had the most 
even and uniform development of any schools within the State. In 
the early eighties there was considerable complaint over absentees 
and the lack of a sufficient teaching force. Evening classes were 
organized to meet a demand in this line, and in 1885, as a supplement 
to its work, a drawing school, supported largely by private gifts, was 
opened and reached an attendance of 133 the first year. The funds 
raised by taxation were supplemented from time to time by loans 
made on the faith of the city, and the development of the city's 
educational system has proceeded with more or less uniformity and 
continuity in matters of school accommodations, income and ex- 
penditure, total enrollment, and average attendance, total available 
school buildings and increase in the teaching force. All this increase 
has been brought about in harmony with the general growth and 
development of the city, the tax rate for schools being now less than 
1 per cent more than in 1886-87. 

This gradual and steady growth, this expansion and fairly uniform 
unfolding of a city system, is brought out more clearly in the attached ' 
table of Wilmington city school growth since 1872-73. Many other 
statistics are printed in the city reports, but they fail to give such 
important items as average salary and total school population. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 



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THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 99 

III. DEVELOPMENT OF STATE EDUCATION FOR NEGROES. 

Omitting the efforts of the Society for the Propagation of the 
. Gospel in the eighteenth century, it will be found that the beginnings 
of the movement for the education of the Negro in Delaware go back 
at least to the incorporation of the African School Society of Wil- 
mington on January 20, 1824. 1 It was given the usual powers of a 
corporate body and might hold property up to $5,000, but there is 
no formal statement that its purpose was to organize a school. In 
1847 the authority was given the society to extend its holdings from 
$5,000 to $15,000, 2 but no reports on the actual accomplishments of 
the society have been accessible. There are indications that now and 
then negro pupils received a little educational training during the 
ante bellum period, but this was neither great in amount nor valuable 
in character. As late as 1866 there were only seven schools for 
Negroes in the State — three in Wilmington, two in Camden, one at 
Odessa, and one at Newport. In December of that year a movement 
was inaugurated in Wilmington by influential citizens of that city, 
including Mr. William S. Hilles, Prof. Wm. A. Keynolds, Mr. Howard 
M. Jenkins and others, together with Mr. Francis T. King and Dr. 
James Carey Thomas, of Baltimore, who were doing similar work in 
that city. The Wilmington movement resulted in the organization 
on January 3, 1867, 3 of the Delaware Association for the Moral 
Improvement and Education of the Colored People. The associa- 
tion celebrated its first anniversary on February 28, 1868, with an 
unusual address by Ebenezer D. Bassett, a colored man, who in a 
burst of enthusiasm declared that his youth had been spent among 
white children in New England and his maturer years in teaching 
colored children and that he could now say " emphatically and con- 
scientiously" that he had " never been able to detect the least differ- 
ence in the capacities of the two classes of youth to acquire and 
retain knowledge and thought." 4 

The work of the association was carried on through an agent 
called an actuary, and beginning with 1867 it undertook to accumu- 
late a fund from which to pay the salaries of teachers in the colored 
schools. Many private subscriptions were made to its funds and 
the Freedman's Bureau in Washington donated sufficient lumber to 
erect some 10 schoolhouses. Rev. John G. Furey became the first 
actuary, and within six months the association had been able to 
increase the schools from 7 to 15, 7 being located in New Castle, 4 in 
Kent, and 4 in Sussex. The actuary had a general superintendence 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1824, ch. 210. 

2 Ibid., 1847, ch. 135. 

3 See Conrad, H. C: A Glimpse of the Colored Schools, 1883, and Powell, L. P.: History of Education in 
Delaware, 1893, p. 168. See also some account of this work in Barnard's Report on Education in the Dis- 
trict of Columbia. 

* Copy of Bassett's address in Library of Congress. 



100 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

over the erection of buildings, the placing of teachers, and the general 
conduct of the schools. The association for its part agreed to pro- 
vide for the salary of teachers, which averaged about $14 per month; 
th3 colored people in the several localities agreed for their part to 
pay the board of the teachers and to nieet the miscellaneous ex- 
penses of the schools. This was done by charging the pupils a small 
tuition fee. Mr. Furey was succeeded as actuary by Samuel Wool- 
man and he in turn gave place to Abbie C. Peckham, who served from 
1868 to 1874. 

The first annual report of the association was published in Feb- 
ruary, 1868; others followed in February, 1869, and March, 1870. 
They are summarized in the reports of the United States Commis- 
sioner of Education, 1871-1874, from which the following accounts 
are taken: 

In 1869 the association built a schoolhouse in Wilmington, $5,000 
of the cost being contributed by the city council to cover similar 
amounts given by the association and by Gen. Howard on account 
of the Freedman's Bureau. The house was finished in a thorough 
and substantial manner and was dedicated September 20, 1869. 
There were then 4 separate day schools in Wilmington which were all 
united in the new building. There were in Wilmington 150 pupils in 
the primary grades, with 4 teachers, and 50 in the higher or normal 
grades with 1 teacher. In the State there were all told, as given in 
the reported summary, 29 schools and teachers, with a total enroll- 
ment of 2,104 and an average attendance of 1,221. Of these pupils 
1,297 were in reading and spelling, 711 in writing, 586 in arithmetic, 
285 in geography, 76 in grammar, and 273 in the alphabet and primer. 

The receipts for the year amounted to $10,483.24, of which $2,440 
came from the Freedman's Bureau and $3,833.58 was collected from 
the patrons of the school through a " weekly charge of 10 cents for 
each pupil" which was applied to the payment of board of teachers 
and the purchase of books and stationery. " Howard Associations'' 
were also formed in the State to pay the tuition of poor children. 
They had 400 members who contributed $40 weekly, enough to pay 
the tuition of 400 children. 

The actuary urged the need of a normal school for the training of 
teachers, and on November 15, 1871, she reported for that year 20 
schools with 22 teachers; 9 were located in New Castle County, 8 in 
Kent, and 3 in Sussex; as a rule they were in the towns. The city of 
Wilmington contributed that year $1,000 toward the support of 
Negro schools. This sum and the gift of $5,000 in 1869 for building 
seem to have been the first public contributions made to Negro educa- 
tion in the State. 1 

» Report U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1871, pp. 115-118. The census of 1870 gn es 1.195 as the num- 
ber of negroes who attended school in 1870 and 11,820, 10 years of age and o er who could not write. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OP GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 101 

The work of the Delaware Association for 1872 as summarized J 
is not so complete nor so encouraging as that of former years. Funds 
were shorter because the Freedman's Bureau and certain friends in 
England had withdrawn their support. For these reasons the asso- 
ciation had to depend more on the school localities and patrons. 
Wilmington city again contributed $1,000 to the work, although 
there was no provision made for the education of Negroes "by either 
the State or town authorities." Eighteen schools with 21 teachers 
were reported; the schools were in session from two to nine and one- 
half months. The teachers were all colored women except the 
principal of the Howard School. The highest enrollment reported 
was 984 in January, 1872, with an average attendance of 858; about 
half of these pupils were over 16. The total expenses were over 
$5,000, the association paying about one-half and the patrons the 
other half. In conclusion the report says: " Throughout the State 
there is a marked decrease of unfriendliness toward our work ex- 
hibited by the white people." 

The reports for 1873 were more encouraging than in 1872. In 
the latter year the State board of education took over and made a 
part of the public system the Howard School of Wilmington, which, 
as has been shown, already was organized through the joint efforts 
of the city council of Wilmington, the Freedman's Bureau, and 
private citizens. The president of the State board wrote also that 
he was favorably impressed fyy the benefits conferred by the Dela- 
ware Association in helping the local committees in the selection of 
teachers, in the purchase of uniform textbooks, and in making reports. 
He then adds: "I think it is not too much to assume that in conse- 
quence of this supervision the colored schools in some parts of the 
State are in better condition and more efficient in their work than the 
white schools. " 2 

The association itself reported that for the year 1872-73 there 
were 21 schools with an enrollment of about 1,800; the average 
attendance was 866; the association spent about $4,000, of which 
about $3,000 was raised by private subscription in and near Wil- 
mington, while the colored people raised and expended on their own 
account about $5,000 for board and salary of teachers, repairs, etc. 3 

The association had 28 schools with 28 teachers and an enrollment 
of about 1,200 4 in 1874 and with that year the first chapter in the 
history of negro education in Delaware comes to an end. 5 

i Rep. U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1872, pp. 55-56. 

2 Ibid., 1873, pp. 58-59. 

3 Ibid., 1873, pp. 63-64. 
* Ibid., 1874, p. 56. 

5 For the sources for this phase of education in the State, see the Delaware Association's reports trans- 
mitted to the U. S. Commissioner of Education and printed in his Reports for 1871-1874; Conrad's A. 
Glimpse at the Colored Schools (Wilmington, Del., 1883) and his History of Delaware (1908), III, pp. 
816-819. See also, Powell, L. P.: History of Education in Delaware (1S93), p. 168. 






102 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWABE. 

Iii 1875 private philanthropy begins to give way to State action- 
Up to that time all efforts had been the result of private initiative 
given through the Delaware Association, supplemented by such help 
as the negroes could themselves render. Up to 1875, with the excep- 
tion of the help given in Wilmington, " there had been no donation 
made by the State; neither had there been any legislation that 
recognized in any way the colored children in the educational system 
of the State." x 

There had been, however, at least an attempt made to make such 
a connection. The sponsors of the State school bill proposed in 1873 
had tried to effect this union, but failed. They had proposed that 
under given conditions the colored population of any neighborhood 
might be allowed to raise $75 in the manner then prescribed by law. 
The effect of the proposed law would have been to organize a second 
county system, parallel with that of the whites, each race supporting 
its own schools. But this proposal went down with the defeat of the 
general law. 2 

In 1875 there came the change. Two acts of that session dealt 
with the question of Negro education. Chapter 48 allowed the levy 
courts to lay an annual tax of 30 cents on the hundred "upon the 
assessment of the real and personal property and c poll of colored 
persons," the proceeds of which was to be set aside "asa separate 
and distinct fund for the support and maintenance of colored schools 
in this State." 3 These taxes were to» be collected in the usual way 
and paid over to the county treasurer, who was to keep them as a 
separate fund and pay them out to the treasurer of the Delaware 
Association by whom they were to be devoted "to the support and 
maintenance of colored schools, " each county receiving such sum 
as it has paid in. ' Another act (ch. 47) allowed a tax on the dogs of 
negroes, to be collected in Sussex for the benefit of negro schools in 
that county. 

As has been pointed out in case of the act proposed in 1873, the 
result of the acts of 1875 was to create a second educational system 
in Delaware, alike in scope and character to that which had been 
evolved for the whites through two generations of effort and differing 
from it only in the amount of its resources. 

In the beginning the Negro schools seem to have made slight im- 
pression, for there is no mention of this phase of the work in the free- 
school report for 1875-76. Mr. Henry C. Conrad became actuary of 
the Delaware Association in May, 1876, and remained in charge of this 
work for about 16 years, when it was finally and completely absorbed 
into the State system. He made regular reports to the State au- 

1 Conrad: Glimpse at the Colored Schools, p. 7. 
* Report U. S. Commis. of Ed., 1873, pp. 51-52. 

3 An amendment of 1881 required each hundred to receive back again its own taxes paid in and no more, 
and the lowest number of pupils permitted was fixed at 15. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 103 

thorities, and as these reports are printed as a part of those of ,the 
State superintendent, it is possible to trace the steps by which the 
work was gradually taken over by the State . 

In 1878 Mr., now Judge, Conrad pointed out that the school tax 
yielded only income sufficient to pay about one-third of the expenses, 
of the schools, the other two-thirds had to be raised mainly among 
the Negroes themselves, but — 

notwithstanding the stress of the times and the great scarcity of money among this 
particular class, in almost every instance the teachers' salaries and other expenses 
of the schools have been promptly met and the schools closed free from debt. 

This was the situation of affairs from 1875 to 1881. During this 
period the Negroes were bearing the entire burden of supporting their 
own schools. The income of the Delaware Association had fallen off 
so much that it could now do little more than employ an agent. The 
employment of this agent or actuary was always deemed by the asso- 
ciation as a wise and necessary action, for he looked after the selec- 
tion of teachers, controlled the disbursing of funds, and was in entire 
control of the colored schools. He was in reality more of a State 
superintendent within the limits of his province than was the officer 
who bore the title. 

The first direct participation of the State as such in the education 
of the Negro was through the act passed on March 22, 1881. This 
was doubtless in response to an appeal from Actuary Conrad for 
State aid. In the report for 1880 State Supt. Groves quoted with 
approval the reference of the actuary to the ''self-sacrificing efforts 
the colored people of this State have been making for the last 12 
years," and urged that the State respond to their request for financial 
aid. In response to this appeal, and largely through the efforts of 
Thomas N. Williams, then chairman of the house committee on 
education, later State superintendent, the State made a direct 
appropriation of $2,400 for the general purposes of education among 
the colored population. It was provided that this money should be 
disbursed by the Delaware Association. It was to be divided equally, 
but no school should participate in the distribution of this fund unless 
it was open for at least three months and had had an average attend- 
ance of 20 pupils. 1 

In 1883 another act was passed 2 which went a step further in fos- 
tering Negro schools. It charged the State superintendent with 
"the general supervision of the colored schools of the State" and 
provided $5,000 per annum out of the State treasury for the promo- 
tion of negro education, instead of $2,400 as under the law of 1881. 
The law of 1883 provided further that the State fund should be 
divided equally between the counties and between the various schools 
in the county. It was required that the school should be at least 

1 Laws of 1881, ch. 362, passed Mar. 22. 2 Laws of 1883, ch. 48, passed Apr. 19, 



104 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

three months in length and have an average attendance of at least 
12 pupils. The taxes collected from Negro citizens were still kept 
separate. 

The State superintendent reported for the year ending December 
1, 1884, the income of colored schools as follows: State appropria- 
tion, $4,987.34; colored school tax, $2,873.69; Delaware Association, 
$315.25; total, $8,176.28. The average amount paid each school 
per month was $24, and the term varied in length from four to eight 
months, but there was for the year no marked increase in attendance. 
Wet weather and bad roads were made responsible for this failure. 
It was reported that in some schools it was still necessary to charge 
a small tuition fee, but the increased appropriation from the State 
had brought these schools "much nearer to a 'free school' system." 

The report for 1886 was made under the same law. There had been 
"substantial and encouraging progress." There were 69 schools out- 
side of Wilmington with an enrollment of 3,563, and $7,166.69 had 
been received, of which $4,655.63 came from the State appropriation 
and $2,511.06 from taxes. "Well-educated, industrious, and earnest 
teachers" had been employed, and the average term was 4§ months. 
The actuary points out the schools of New Castle, Middletown, New- 
ark, Smyrna, Milford, Seaford, and Lewes as strong, while the one in 
Dover would "compare favorably with many of the graded schools," 
but "more suitable and comfortable houses" were needed. It was 
suggested by the superintendent that "many of the schools in the 
larger towns might be made more efficient by allowing them to form 
local boards and to increase their facilities to meet the expenses of the 
schools." 

This suggestion of the superintendent was evidently the basis for 
the legislation of 188?. In that year another phase of the movement 
appears in the incorporation of negro schools in Dover and Slaughter 
Neck. 1 The former was a town, the latter a country district. Each 
was exempted from the general tax provision of 1875 relating to 
negro schools and was permitted instead to levy a special tax on all 
negro citizens within its bounds. Each was given also its share of 
the State apportionment for colored schools. Each had authority 
to elect its own board of directors and each entered on an official 
life similar in all respects to the incorporated white schools. This 
separate incorporation of negro schools had its highest development 
in 1889, when the negro schools in Seaford, Kenton Hundred, Lewes, 
and Milford received such charters . The Colored A . and M . College was 
founded in 1891, but no special charters were then granted, probably 
for the reasons intimated in the 1892 report of the county superin- 
tendent of Sussex, who says that in the matter of administration the 
negroes had "absolutely failed with the provisions of the law grant- 

> Laws of 1887, chs. 63 and 89. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 105 

ing them power to levy and collect school taxes in certain districts. 
They are not sufficiently intelligent to deal with the matter of taxa- 
tion." To prove this he cites the fact that while they levied $1,449 
in Sussex they collected only $569. More effective methods of col- 
lecting the tax were needed, and it was suggested that each school 
district be required to contribute a certain amount of tax for its own 
support, as the white schools were required to do. It is evident that 
this view of the situation was accepted, for no acts of incorporation 
for negro schools were passed after 1889, and in 1893 all incorporated 
colored schools were abolished, and they were then subjected "to the 
same laws and under the supervision of the superintendent of schools 
for the county in which they are situate, in the same manner as now 
by law provided for unincorporated colored schools." * 

Another act of the session 2 of 1887 codified and extended the 
earlier acts. Provisions for a general tax of 30 cents on the hundred 
on "real and personal property and poll of colored persons" through- 
out the State were now made. 3 Six thousand dollars was provided 
as a general contribution from the State, to be divided equally 
between the counties and equally between the schools in each county; 
the school taxes were to be expended in the hundreds where raised, 
and the county superintendents were given "general control and 
supervision of the colored schools in their respective counties." 
With this law the separate organization of Negro schools was com- 
pleted and made parallel with that of the whites. The State and 
county superintendents had coextensive authority over each; 
there was the same uniform general tax levy required ; special incor- 
porated schools, independent of the State authorities, had been 
inaugurated; and a State fund, direct from the treasury, had been 
provided. 

The actuary reported for the year ending December 31, 1888, that 
the recently incorporated schools at Dover and Slaughter Neck were 
" working satisfactorily to all concerned." Dover was the largest 
school in the State, with an enrollment of 142; Middle town had 123, 
and the other incorporated school at Slaughter Neck had 102. The 
total number of schools was 69, with an enrollment of 3,570. The 
total available funds were $7,537.25, of which $5,364 came from State 
appropriation and $2,173.25 from school tax. It will be noticed 
that the Delaware Association had now ceased to contribute to the 
fund. Although Mr. Conrad was still in nominal control as actuary, 
the real control had been transferred to the county superintendents 
by the act of 1887, but inasmuch as Mr. Conrad had been the agent 
of the Delaware Association since May, 1876, and as he had directed 

i Laws of Delaware, 1893, ch. 602, sec. 14. 

2 Ibid., 1887, ch. 91, passed Apr. 22, 1887. 

3 Ibid., 1887, ch. 91. 



106 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

all the work of the association and made its reports, he had been 
permitted to remain in office. There were, however, indications that 
the question of Negro schools was now getting into politics, and the 
county superintendent of Kent announced that the next year he 
should relieve Mr. Conrad of the work. 1 

Up to this time the Negroes had had few schoolhouses of their own. 
They supplemented these few with quarters obtained in private 
houses, in churches, or society halls. In 1889 the State began to 
meet their needs in this respect by ordering the authorities of Lewes 
to contribute $500 of public money toward the erection of a 
schoolhouse. The act of 1891 increased the annual appropriation 
from $6,000 to $9,000 per year and directed that of this latter sum 
$500 per year for four years should be devoted to the repair of school- 
houses, provided local patrons would contribute half as much as the 
State; the auditor was now directed to audit the accounts of the 
colored schools; in the matter of free textbooks they were put on an 
equality with the whites, and by the same act the " entire manage- 
ment, control, and supervision of the colored schools" was put into 
the hands of the county superintendents. 2 

About this time also (1892) the work of the Delaware Association 
was brought to a close. There was no report in 1890 or 1892 from 
Actuary Conrad, for the colored schools were taking their place as a 
coordinate part of the dual school system of the State. The second 
chapter in the evolution of Negro schools had been closed. 

The statistics of the colored schools from 1876 to 1892 follow below. 
They were compiled in the main by Henry C. Conrad, actuary for the 
Delaware Association from May, 1876, to 1892. No other items are 
given with sufficient uniformity to make a comparison of one year 
with another of any value. Certain other statistics of colored schools 
are given in connection with the schools of Wilmington, but in general 
in recent years, the statistics for the State as a whole have not been 
sufficiently differentiated to make them of service. 

i State superintendent's report for 1888, p. 33. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1891, ch. 66, and 1893, ch. 602. 



THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF GROVES AND WILLIAMS. 

Statistics of negro schools, 1876-1892. 



107 



V 



Year. 


Num- 
ber of 
schools. 


Aver- 
age 
length 
of term 

in 
months. 


Total 
enroll- 
ment. 


Receipts 
from 

taxes. 


Total 
available 
receipts, 
including 
balances. 


Paid to 
teachers. 


Total 
expenses. 


1377-78: 

New Castle, 1876 


15 

18 
14 

14 
19 
17 

15 

18 
13 

24 
23 
22 

24 
25 
24 

19 
26 
24 

27 
30 
28 

22 
30 
32 


5.0 
4.5 
3.3 

5.0 
4.5 
3.0 

5.7 
5.0 
5.0 

5.8 
4.7 
4.4 

5.0 

4.8 
4.4 

7.5 
4.5 
4.5 


679 
972 
565 

634 
990 
630 

610 
911 
476 

1,733 

1,495 
993 

1,872 
1,486 
1,045 

6 965 
6 1, 508 


i $1,034.03 

863. 75 

3 206. 93 

i 1, 408. 29 
746. 45 
500. 00 

751. 81 
1, 178. 53 


2 $735. 00 

1, 048. 42 
206. 93 

1, 190. 70 

581. 58 
465. 68 

1, 454. 26 
916. 16 
99.93 

2, 665. 93 
2, 853. 05 
2, 724. 48 

2, 421. 95 
2, 661. 50 
2, 362. 00 

2, 210. 25 
2, 890. 90 
2, 436. 10 

2, 474. 45 

2, 680. 73 

3, 098. 03 


$620. 00 
835. 00 
279. 00 

488. 25 
793. 75 
365. 75 

636. 00 

817. 87 
338. 00 


$642. 75 


Kent 


863. 85 


Sussex 


293. 25 


1 579-80: 

New Castle 


488. 25 


Kent 


793. 75 


Sussex 


365. 75 


1881-82: 

New Castle 




Kent 


817. 87 




338. 00 


1883-84: 

New Castle 


■o 998. 60 

1, 120. 11 

765. 48 

754. 39 
994. 75 
761. 92 

690. 00 
Qfifi. 90 




Kent 






Sussex 






1886: 

New Castle 






Kent 






Sussex 






1338: 

New Castle 






Kent 






Sussex 


6 1, 097 516. 10 
2,023 474.45 






1890: 

New Castle 


i 26. 11 
7 23. 50 
7 23.50 






1, 501 
1,132 


680. 73 
1, 098. 03 




Sussex 




1892: s 

N ew Castle 




Kent 


5.2 
4.6 


1, 566 
1,047 










Sussex 


569. 89 


3, 513. 93 


22.59 









1 Includes $657.90 tax for 1876 and $376.13 for 1877. 

2 Where the total in this column is less than the total in the preceding column, it means that the differ- 
ence was used in paying debts contracted in the preceding year. , 

a Balance on hand' from June 30, 1877. 

< Ne: v) school tax in New Castb in 1879 was $1,260.53 (see Aud. Rep., 1880-81, p. 66); and in Sussex, 
$571.38 (p. 124). 

5 The statistics as gi/en bave it uncM-tain whether this and the amounts following were or were not 
th^ whob sum derived from taxation. It is entered as "amount paid from school tax fund." 

6 Highest monthly enrollment. 

7 A -*era?e monthly salary. 

8 Mi ,c ilaneous statistics' of Negro schools for various years: Averase salarv of teachers in Wilmington, 
1889 and 1890, $40.79 per month; number of teachers, 96; in 1878, enrollment, 1,663; in 1880, population, 3,954, 
and enrollment, 2,216, excluding Wilmington; in 1882, population, 5,300, and enrollment, 1,997, excluding 
Wilmington; in 1884, population, 5,500; in 1886, population, 5,750; in 1S89, population, 5,542, and enrollment, 
4,556, av ; era*e attendance, 2,851; in 1899-1900, enrollment, 4,897; available receipts, counties not differen- 
tiated (reckoned apparently on a different basis); in 1894, $12,189; in 1S95, $11,418; in 1896, $15,049: in 1897, 
$13,939; in 1898, $18,660; in 19JQ, $20,420. When the Negro schools became thoroughly incorporated into 
the public-school system, separate statistics disappear. 



Chapter VI. 

THE STATE SYSTEM: ADMINISTRATION OF THE 
STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION, 1887-1898. 



As shown in the last chapter, there was a State superintendent in 
Delaware from 1875 to 1887. This meant that there had been some 
growth in the idea of centralization in the State, but it should not be 
thought that this idea had taken a deep and abiding hold on the 
people. It is true that there was a State superintendent, but his 
powers of direction and control were limited. He had authority to 
visit the schools; he examined teachers and granted certificates; and 
there his power stopped. He had no authority over the levying of 
taxes. A small minimum tax for each v district was demanded by 
State-wide law, but all beyond that minimum was still in the hands 
of the local school district electorate; and as they had done in 1830 
they were still doing 50 years after that date — quarreling over the 
amount of the tax levy, with the poor man, the man who had little 
or nothing to be taxed and many children to be schooled, not on the 
side of a larger local tax which his rich neighbor would pay, but gen- 
erally against such tax. And after the tax levy was finally fixed and 
the tax collected, neither the State superintendent nor his repre- 
sentatives had any voice in spending the same. This authority was 
in the hands of the local school committee; all the State could do was 
done through the veto power of the auditor before whom the accounts 
were brought once a year for settlement. 

Then, too, the superintendent was appointed by the governor, and 
for one year only, thus making change in personnel or in policy sub- 
ject to the caprices of political fortune or the personal whim of succeed- 
ing governors. It was plainly very difficult for any superintendent 
in this State to inaugurate and carry to completion any systematic 
plan of educational development, for his tenure of office was not long 
enough and his powers were not sufficiently great. 

It follows, then, that when the State superintendency was abolished 
in 1887 and a return made to the older individualistic county system, 
the change was neither as great nor as serious in the matter of decen- 
tralization as might be imagined. 1 

1 This change did not meet with universal favor. As early as 1S91 Gov. Reynolds recommended that 
the superintendency be restored. See his message for that ;, ear. 

108 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 109 
I. THE STATE SCHOOL LAW OF 1887— LATER LEGISLATION, 1891-1895. 

Under the law of April 7, 1887, the positions of State superintendent 
and assistant State superintendent were abolished from and after 
April 13, 1887, the expiration of the term of the persons then in 
office. In their place the governor was given power to appoint 
annually a suitable person to be superintendent of free schools in 
each county, with a salary of $1,000 per annum. These county super- 
intendents were required to be of good moral character and "well 
qualified by their mental and scholarly attainments for such office." 1 

It was the duty of the county superintendent to visit each school 
within his county at least twice each year. He was to note the con- 
dition of each school; the condition of the buildings, grounds, and 
fixtures; the efficiency of teachers; the conduct and standing of 
pupils; the methods of instruction and government. He was to 
advise with teachers, giving them such help and instruction as was 
deemed necessary, and might suspend any teacher who refused to 
comply with "reasonable directions" from him. He was to examine 
all teachers, by oral or written examinations or both. 2 The field 
covered by the examinations and the grades of the certificates were 
not changed from the requirements established by the act of 1879. 
The certificate itself was now issued by the State board and counter- 
signed by the county superintendent, and no teacher might be em- 
ployed who did not hold this certificate. 

The county superintendent was required to make an annual report 
to the president of the State board and was forbidden to purchase 
any books used in the public schools at the expense of the State. 

The State board of education was made up of the secretary of 
state, who became its secretary ex officio, the president of Delaware 
College, who became president of the board, and the three county 
superintendents. It met once a year, heard appeals, chose textbooks 
for the schools, issued blanks and forms, and required returns to be 
made. The president was required to make a biennial report to the 
governor, beginning with 1889. 

The county superintendents were required to hold in each county 
annually a teachers' institute of at least three days in length, for the 
maintenance of which $100 was provided annually from the school 
fund. Both county superintendents and teachers were required to 
attend these institutes, and teachers were to make quarterly reports 
on their schools. 

1 In 1895 (ch. 13) this requirement was changed so as to read, "and shall hold a certificate of graduation 
from a reputable college or an unexpired certificate of the highest grade provided for by the laws of this State, 
and shall have had at least two years' experience as a teacher in the public schools of this or some other 
State." 

2 The manner in which this phase of the work was conducted was a source of irritation. Thus, in House 
Journal for 1S99. pp. 902-3, is the record of a spat on this question. Mr. Shallcross complained over the 
character of these examinations and charged that the county superintendents gave catch questions. He 
thought the educational system was retrograding, and. thought in a little while it would be back where it 
was a hundred years ago. 



110 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Books and papers of the State superintendent's office were to be 
turned over to the secretary of state, who was to sell all schoolbooks 
received and cover the money into the treasury. The county super- 
intendents were to do the same, and these sections, when read in the 
light of the paragraph forbidding the county superintendents to buy 
schoolbooks out of public funds, show that the State was now aban- 
doning the plan of supplying schoolbooks at cost, while still holding 
to the idea of State uniformity. 

All acts and parts of acts not in conformity with this act were 
repealed, but all provisions for suits, etc., were continued in force 
and finally: 

The provisions of this act shall not apply to any school or school districts managed or 
controlled by an incorporated board of education, unless by special request of said board. 1 

It will be noticed that the act of 1887, by repealing all acts not in 
conformity with its own provisions, finally separated the State from 
the terms of the act of 1829, but in other respects the character of 
other phases of school legislation was not changed. All authority 
pertaining to the borrowing of money for school purposes, consoli- 
dating, dividing, or changing the boundaries of districts, etc., still 
went through the legislature. The people were held competent to 
manage the local money side of education, from levying the tax to 
spending the sums raised, but they were not thought competent to 
change school district boundary lines, although an act of 1891 (ch. 67) 
required a notice of 10 days for transfers of territory from one district 
to another and for the consolidation of districts. 2 

Hardly had the act of 1887 been put into execution before the usual 
process of amendment began. It will be recalled that the act of 1887 
practically abandoned the scheme of free textbooks. The act of 1891 
not only went back to the principle, but made textbooks really free. 
They were now to be bought by the State, and distributed to the 
school districts, and by the school commission loaned to the pupils 
.or sold at cost when it was so desired. The colored schools were 
admitted to a participation in this provision, and their "entire man- 
agement, control, and supervision" was put into the hands of the 
county superintendents, as already narrated in an earlier section. 
Their funds were increased and were to be examined and passed by 
the auditor just as was done in the case of the white schools, but 
because of inexperience in matters of finance it was thought best to 
repeal in 1893 the acts granting charters of incorporation to certain 
negro schools. 3 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1887, ch. 67, passed Apr. 7, 1887. 

2 The auditor's report in 1894 (p. v) points out that the transfer of real estate from one school district 
to another was frequent and unjust; that this legislation was often effected without apparent opposition 
simply for want of funds to defray expenses of school officials while making such opposition. It was 
thought that the settlement of such matters should be left with the State board of education. In his 
message in 1891 Gov. Biggs recommended that no further changes in school districts be allowed except 
on application by a majority of the school voters in each district. 

3 Laws of Delaware, 1893, ch. 602, sec. 14. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. HI 

In 1891 the composition of the State board was itself changed, for 
the president of Delaware College ceased to be a member, and the 
governor of the State became its president ex officio, and finally the 
schools of Wilmington were exempted from the provisions of this act. 1 

In 1893 came other changes. A general act provided a new basis 
on which the State money was to be apportioned within the counties. 
The share of Wilmington was to be predicated on 10,000 school chil- 
dren; in New Castle County each district was to receive $150; and 
any remainder was divided on the basis of enrollment. In Kent 
and Sussex the division was to remain as already established by law. 
The income of the State school fund could be used only for the pay- 
ment of teachers and at a rate not to exceed $35 per month. The 
purpose of this section was clearly to encourage local taxation, and the 
purpose of the section which required unexpended balances to be 
deducted from the next year's appropriation was without doubt to 
break up the custom of hoarding balances for the sake of private 
speculation. 

In 1893 the requirements for teachers' certificates were raised. 
They now include orthography, reading, writing, mental and written 
arithmetic, geography, physiology, history of the United States, 
pedagogy, and English grammar; and in addition to the above they 
included for the highest certificate algebra, geometry, civics, natural 
philosophy, and rhetoric. The grading was made a little closer, and 
the professional certificate was made good for four years. 

In 1895 and 1897 the acts of most educational significance re- 
lated to negroes. The most important in 1895 was that "to im- 
prove and promote the colored schools." This act made the county 
treasurers responsible on their bonds for the funds received under the 
act. The appropriation for negro schools was increased from $9,000 
to $12,000 per year, to come out of the school fund. From the same 
fund there was also appropriated annually $3,000 for textbooks and 
building purposes. This was to be divided equally between the 
three counties, and the three county superintendents were to act 
jointly as a building board, determine where repairs and alterations 
were to be made, and provide for the erection of new buildings when 
deemed necessary. The county superintendents were also confirmed 
in "the entire control and supervision of the colored schools." They 
were to decide on their location, to make rules for the examination of 
teachers, and to "appoint only such persons as teachers as are fully 
qualified in point of character and scholarship to fill the places." 
They were to make an estimate to their respective county treasurers 
showing the number and location, length of term, and amount of 
money required for and applicable to each school, 2 an(? were to appor- 

> Laws of Delaware, 1S91, ch. 66. 

2 This section was repealed by ch. 422, acts of^ 97 - 



112 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

tion to each school an equal amount from the State contribution; 
the monthly allowance to each school was to be equalized as nearly 
as possible, and the amounts collected in any county in colored 
taxes were to be expended in that county. 1 

In 1897 the State granted $100 per year for the establishment, 
support, and maintenance of the Delaware Colored Teachers' State 
Institute, to be located in Kent County. 2 With these various acts 
the work of taking over the colored schools from the independent 
private organizations by which they had been begun and trans- 
ferring them to the State administration was practically complete. 
The systems of colored schools now duplicated at most points the 
white schools. Two systems independent of and parallel to each 
other were administered by the county superintendents. 

When a summary review is made of the legal side of the school 
situation between 1887 and 1898, certain contrasts and changes, as 
compared with the earlier period (1875-1887) become apparent. 
In these changes (1) the State board of education just about held its 
own. It gained the additional right to issue the teachers' certificates, 
but this was little more than mere form, since the county superin- 
tendents had the power to pass or not to pass the teachers examined. 
(2) The county superintendent's office was reestablished, after having 
been abolished by the act of 1875; the State superintendent's office 
was abolished; his powers were decentralized and given to the county 
superintendents. (3) The State system of uniformity in textbooks 
was maintained, but the State at first did not undertake to purchase 
and furnish books to all pupils at cost, although they went a step 
further in 1891 and made them entirely free. (4) Reports were now 
made biennial instead of annual, so that the published volumes 
covered the whole intervening period instead of a single year of a 
two-year period as was apparently the case in the annual reports 
between 1875 and 1887. (5) The support of the county institutes 
was made a regular and formal charge on the school fund, and a simi- 
lar institute for colored teachers was also provided. (6) The colored 
schools were formally and completely transferred to the State system, 
but with their own organization independent and separate from that 
of the whites; the special acts of incorporation being repealed, all 
colored schools were now treated as a single unit. (7) Nothing was 
said in these laws in regard to the financial side of the schools. This 
was still a purely local matter, and he who controlled the sinews of 
war of necessity controlled the system. So little did the idea of cen- 
tralization impress the new system that for some years there was no 
summary of statistics for the whole State ; and so little did the ques- 

i Laws of Dalaware, r«5, eh. 17; amended in minor particulars by laws of 1S97, ens. 421 and 422. 
2 Ibid., 1897, eh. 423; ak nded by c ^ 70 i aws f 1898. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOAED OF EDUCATION. 113 

tion of finance impress the county superintendent that in some cases 
there were no county statistics dealing with income and expenditures. 

When taken as a whole the State system in Delaware was then about 
as follows : A State board of education with small advisory powers, 
and under the State board three practically autonomous republics, 
each administering a system for white schools and a corresponding 
system for colored schools, each of the six systems independent of all 
others, and obeying only its own head. Then in each county was a 
series of "independent districts" for whites which were not subject 
to the laws of the county systems unless they chose to be and made 
"special request" to come into the general system. Paralleling the 
series of white "independent districts/' there were, until 1893, corre- 
sponding colored "independent districts," not so numerous as the 
white independents, but with similar powers. And finally, in addi- 
tion to all of the above, came the city of Wilmington in most respects 
separate and distinct from everything else, independent of everybody 
else, and a law unto itself alone. 

This anomalous situation makes itself felt even in the biennial 
reports of the State board. Those for this period are divided sub- 
stantially into three parts. The first is a short and imperfect dis- 
cussion of the free schools as a whole and with little attempt at 
correlating and unifying the separate reports and out of them evolving 
a single, concatenated, fully systematized whole. The statistics are 
brief and incomplete and fail to give a connected picture of the situa- 
tion in the State. The second division presents the reports of the 
three county superintendents with such statistics as are available, 
but unfortunately neither uniform nor complete, and sometimes with 
similar reports on the colored schools. Then comes a report of the 
city of Wilmington, and then another on the schools with incorporated 
boards. 

The duty of the historian, then, is to evolve a connected story out 
of the elements presented by these rival systems. The Delawareans 
have themselves never as yet had the hardihood to face this confused 
situation, prepare a detailed report that will cover the whole field, 
and reduce this complex system to a single, simple whole — hoc opus, 
hie labor est. 

II. PUBLIC SCHOOL DEVELOPMENT, 1887-1898. 

The period now under consideration, 1887-1898, is represented by 
three printed reports. These are for the biennial periods 1887-88, 
1889-90, and 1891-92. Apparently there were no reports published 
for the years 1893-1898, and the history of that period must be recon- 
structed from the governor's messages, the auditor's reports, and other 
sources. 

9310G— 17— S 



114 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Fortunately some of these messages are full of valuable material. 
Such is the message of Gov. Jones in 1887/ in which he reviews the 
status of the school fund for that period. 

The receipts of the school fund for the previous year were 
$101,027.57. The expenditures were: 

New Castle County $32, 358. 26 

Kent County 23, 256. 59 

Sussex County 28, 136. 10 

Education of the blind 2 1, 040. 00 

Total expenditure 84, 790. 95 

Balance on hand 16, 236. 62 

The principal of the school fund was then invested as follows : 

Farmers' Bank stock, 5,000 shares, at $36 per share $180, 000 

Farmers' Bank stock, 2,439 shares, at $50 per share 121, 950 

Smyrna Bank stock, 114 shares, at $50 per share 5, 700 

National Bank of Delaware stock, 37 shares, at $465 per share 17, 205 

Union National Bank, 254 shares, at $36 per share 9, 144 

School fund bond 3 156, 750 

Loan to Sussex County 4 5, 000 

Total in 1887 . 495. 749 

The same valuation was given in 1889. In 1893 the fund had 
increased in value to $544,742, and in 1897 to $546,577. 

The report for the biennial period 1887-88 is signed by A. N. Eaub, 
president of the State board of education. It is more precise and 
definite, fuller, and more detailed than some which follow, but while 
this general supervisory body had authority to supervise and inspect, 
it had little power to enforce obedience. As is natural, the schools 
of Wilmington were far ahead of those in the smaller towns, and in 
general New Castle County had the best organization, the best 
buildings and furniture, and the best schools. The reports from that 
county showed the keenest interest and closest analysis of the situ- 
ation and undoubtedly its schools were ahead of those of other 

1 House Journal, 1887, p. 12 et seq. 

2 The education of deaf, dumb, blind, and imbecile children is provided for .n institutions outside the 
State. The number of imbeciles is limited to 14, at $200 each, making $2,800. The number of the deaf, 
dumb, and blind is limited only by the amount of the appropriation. See governor's message, 1903. 

3 This item was in the form of a bond issued to the fund July 1, 1877, by the State of Delaware. This 
sum of $156,750 was made up of two items: One of $131,750 received from the sale of stock in the Phila- 
delphia, Wilmington & Baltimore R. R. and covered into the State treasury, and the other of $25,000 pro- 
ceeds of the sale of stock of the New Castle & Wilmington R. R. Co. Both of these items belonged to the 
school fund, but were both covered into the State treasury. In payment the fund was given a bond for 
$156,750, due July 1, 1906. See treasurer's report for 1881-82, pp. 4-5. On July 1, 1906, this bond was 
redeemed, a balance of $22,035, proceeds of the liquidation of the Farmer's Bank at New Castle and belong- 
ing to the school fund was added to the principal and a new bond for $178,785 was given by the-State to 
the school fund, with interest at 6 per cent payable in 1931. See ch. 19, sess. laws of 1905. 

* This loan to Sussex County came out of the surplus revenue and was made soon after the receipt of 
that fund. By act of Feb. 6, 1877 (ch. 486, sec. 1), the county of Sussex was required to set apart out of its 
general revenue $300 which was counted as interest on this debt, and was then given back to the county 
to be used on its schools. The remainder of the annual school fund derived from the surplus revenue of 
1837 was divided equally between the three counties. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 115 

counties, but these facts do not necessarily imply criticism of others. 
New Castle County has less than one-fourth the area of the State, 
but it has the only city, more than half the population and wealth, 
and, more than its share of the educational leaders. Within its 
restricted area organization has been possible which could not le 
carried out in the more rural sections. 

One of the matters which impressed the president of the board as 
of the greatest significance in 1887-88 was teachers' certificates. It 
was thought that the distance between the third and the second 
grades was too great, and it was proposed to decrease the gap by 
bringing down by 5 numbers the requirements for the higher grade 
and raising those for the lower by 10 numbers. 

For the first time compulsory attendance is mentioned. It was 
being discussed in other States, but as Groves had opposed it a decade 
before, so now Raub found that he could not ''recommend such a 
law for Delaware." He thought it might be possible in a city ' ' backed 
by a constabulary force," but "it has never been either effective or 
popular in communities chiefly agricultural, and it would not prob- 
ably be so in this State." 

The president of the board pointed out that the system of separate 
school districts then in force in the State represented a unit too small 
for the best results. More or less progress was reported all along the 
line, it is true, but that progress was uniform neither chronologically 
nor from school to school. This irregularity was made possible 
because of the freedom of initiative allowed to the school district 
unit; but unfortunately desire, ambition, and knowledge were not 
equal in all sections; opportunities and facilities were not uniform; 
individual initiative not equal; wealth and resources not the same. 
As one county superintendent said, the schools were good, bad, or 
indifferent according to the district, and little hope of improvement 
was to be indulged in while the district remained as it was. 

The president of the board pointed out that the State system 
"would be greatly benefited by making each hundred a school 
district." This hundred system would compare in a general way to 
the township system of other states: 

In Delaware this same system would greatly increase the efficiency of the schools. 
Either of two plans might be adopted. The hundreds, as at present constituted, 
might each be made a separate school district, in which each school under the general 
board of control would offer the same educational privileges and facilities as its neigh- 
bors in the same hundred. At present one school in a hundred may give 40 weeks' 
instruction during the year, while its neighbor in the same hundred, * * * may 
offer to the children only 30 weeks. The hundred system would correct all such 
inequalities. 

A modification of this system might be made probably equally effective by dividing 
the hundreds as school districts into incorporated boroughs and rural districts. Thus 
a hundred with one incorporated borough would have two school districts. * * * 
This is really the township system of such States as do not have the separate district 



116 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

systems. Wherever adopted it makes more efficient schools, equalizes the taxes, and 
does away with the jealousy which seems inevitable between the boroughs and the 
rural districts. 

By no means the smallest gain of this system would be the ultimate establishment 
of hundred high schools. 1 ' • 

The school authorities had now arrived at that stage in their 
development when they began to realize the disadvantages of their 
highly decentralized system. It is evident that they felt the need 
of greater concentration, even if they were not yet ready to demand 
a general law providing that all school administrative systems be 
brought under a single head. The president of the State board says 
further: 

The school system of Delaware would be more efficient and the results more satis- 
factory if all the schools were under the jurisdiction of the county superintendents, 
excepting, of course, such districts as have their own superintendent. Practically, 
at present, the schools having incorporated boards of education are without super- 
vision except that given by the commissioners and their teachers are exempt from 
examination unless the local commissioners decide to the contrary. In fact, the 
act providing for the appointment of county superintendents and the examination 
of teachers and the supervision of schools by these officers specially exempts * * * 
these districts. * * * 2 

This singular feature of the school system of Delaware, of course, destroys the unity 
of the whole system and makes it specially difficult to form an accurate estimate of 
the actual progress of the schools. 

It would be much better for these incorporated boards if they would unite in a 
demand for a hundred system, toward which their action practically tends, and then 
place all the schools of a county under the jurisdiction of the county superintendent, 
except those which have an officer who is distinctively superintendent of the schools 
of the town or city in which he is located, and who exercises the superintendent's 
powers in examining teachers, granting certificates, visiting schools, and the like. It 
would be greatly to the advantage of all districts, incorporated or otherwise, if the 
whole system could be harmonized and unified in the way suggested. 

The county superintendents themselves were not less emphatic in 
their condemnation of the existing system. Levin I. Handy, county 
superintendent of Kent County in 1887-88, charges most of the 
weaknesses of the schools at the time to the smallness of the unit of 
administration. Among these evils he reckons as hindrances to 
progress: The constant changing of teachers, which was so bad in 
some districts that four different teachers would be in charge of a 
single school within a single year; the lack of uniformity in the certi- 
fication of teachers, for each county superintendent was a law unto 
himself and if one refused a certificate the applicant might be licensed 
in another county or given a teaching position in one of the incorpo- 
rated schools which lay alongside of, but were entirely independent 
of, the regular school districts. 

The above troubles, and also the lack of system and classification, 
the neglect of school property and furniture, the unwise, parsimony of 

i Report for 1887-88, pp. 9-10. 

2 Sec ch. 46, laws of 1879, and ch. 67, sec. 17, 1887. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 117 

school officers, the surplus — all these evils are charged up by Mr. 
Handy as due to the smallness of the unit of school administration. 
In place of the school district there was an insistent demand for the 
hundred — the township of most States — as the basis. The school 
district had now been outgrown. It was time for a larger unit. 

The governors in several cases went even further than the county 
superintendents. In 1891 the outgoing governor complained of the 
custom of incorporating school districts and thus removing them 
from the jurisdiction of the supervisory authorities, while the incom- 
ing governor, Reynolds, suggested the reestablishment of the State 
superintendency. This recommendation he renewed in 1893, and in 
1897 Gov. Watson recommended the repeal of the special acts of 
incorporation, on the ground that these schools had not kept pace 
in development with those over which the superintendent had 
jurisdiction. 

These complaints reveal the fact that the situation was in some 
respects a very curious one. Among others, it was found that there 
was no lack of money. The State school fund produced more money 
than could be "properly or economically spent " in some parts of 
the State under the existing laws, without even touching the local 
fund which the district was required to raise by taxation. This sit- 
uation had been brought about in the main by the act of 1889 regu- 
lating the sale of intoxicating liquors. 1 The tax on licenses was by 
this act increased and as it went to the school fund, the income 
from this source was raised from $23,689.57 in 1889 to $65,783.34 
in 1890. 

With this sudden increase in funds came difficulty from "the lack 
of knowledge how to spend the money judiciously, or what is more 
probable, an indisposition to spend the money for purposes which 
all admit to be judicious." It was recommended that the county 
tax levy for schools be lowered, for it was thought that the school 
fund, through the large increase in the liquor license tax, would 
before long make any school tax unnecessary. 

Another recommendation was that this growing surplus be used 
to supply free textbooks to all the children of the State, and to this 
use a part of this surplus was devoted in 1891-92. 2 

Nor was this surplus without its dangers. The custom grew up 
among the school clerks in whose hands these balances were to loan 
them for their own advantage. This would naturally make them 
more indisposed to spend the funds on hand, and it followed that the 

i This act was passed Apr. 24, 1889 (ch. 555, laws of 1889, p. 677). It revises and extends the act of Apr. 
10, 1873. 

2 In 1891 Gov. Reynolds, in his message, reports the balance then on hand as $79,737.76. In June, 1892,, 
the surplus reported as being in the hands of the clerks in the school districts was given by the governor as: 
New Castle County, $23,643.41; Kent County, $10,952.79; Sussex County, $16,837.26; total, $51,433.46. The 
reduction from the figures of 1891 is presumably due mainly to free textbooks, for which $22,985.18 was 
spent during the year 1891-92. 



118 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

district with the largest surplus sometimes had the poorest build- 
ings and furniture. There was complaint also that salaries were 
very low, and the surplus was pointed to as one of the causes 
thereof. 

The difficulty seems to have been met by the act of 1893, for in 
1895 all moneys received from the State were "payable to the party 
entitled by orders or drafts upon the State treasurer" * and no 
longer passed through the hands of the local school clerks. 

Another cause of complaint and a^hindrance to progress was, as 
the president of 'the State board points out, the absence of a nor- 
mal training school — one empowered to grant diplomas. Says the 
presid ent : 

Our sister States are * * * leading us in this matter. * * * Many of our 
brightest young men and women drift to the State normal schools of other States for 
their training, * * * most of these teachers remain in other States after receiving 
their training, and teach where their diplomas are recognized as valid without fur- 
ther examination. 

This need was felt as strongly by the governors. In 1887 Gov. 
Stockley recommended the establishment of such a school and in 
1895 Gov. Reynolds, after demanding more efficient teaching, thought 
"a reasonable amount of instruction in school organization, school 
government, and the art of teaching" should be added to the require- 
ments, and in order to furnish this recommended a training school 
for teachers. In 1897 Gov. Watson recommended more funds for 
teachers' institutes. 

It was pointed out that while the hostility to the system expe- 
rienced in earlier days had now disappeared, there was still in some 
places a lack of interest on the part of teachers and school com- 
missioners and a disposition to leave the matter in the hands of the 
teacher, who was frequently neither guided nor upheld by the local 
authorities. There is much sameness in the reports from year to year, 
as is to be expected, but the general direction was upward and 
Gov. Reynolds said in 1895 that "great progress" had been made in 
the last four years. 

One law of the period met with universal commendation. This 
was the act of 1891 providing free textbooks for all pupils. State 
uniformity had been secured and before 1887 books had been sold 
at cost, but between 1887 and 1891 the State held aloof from sup- 
plying textbooks. Popular demand, in addition to gubernatorial 
recommendation, brought a new law in 1891 and the increased sur- 
plus furnished the means. 

L Governor's message, 1895. See ch. 602, laws of 1893. 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 119 

The first cost for the year ending August, 1892, was: 

New Castle County $6, 349. 58 

Kent County 6,378.88 

Sussex County 10, 256. 72 

Total for first year 22, 985. 18 

This law produced the '-'most gratifying results." It removed 
many obstacles and made for improvement by helping to better 
attendance and better grading as well as a considerable reduction in 
expense. 

All of this progress was " encouraging, but not satisfying," nor 
was it uniform. Some schools had fine houses and excellent furniture, 
while others were kept in houses that were not worth $10; and the 
institutes were cramped and injured for lack of money. Gov. Rey- 
nolds complained in 1893 that the progress of the negro children 
was not " commensurate with the advantages offered," but added that 
this failure was due in part at least to "crude and imperfect" laws. 
One superintendent boldly declared that the incorporated districts 
were harmful because they lowered the standard, since their teachers 
were not subject to examination by the county superintendent, and 
in 1897 Gov. Watson recommended the repeal of these special charters 
of incorporation, for the schools so favored had not kept pace with 
others. 1 

The State report for 1889-90, while pointing to progress, declared 
the system had by no means attained to a position where it might 
rest satisfied with its attainments : 

There has been a steady improvement during the last two years in the general 
condition of the free schools of the State, but neither the State school system nor the 
administration of it has reached anything yet like perfection. The district system is 
necessarily weak. The adoption of what in other States is known as the township 
system, and what might here be properly called the hundred system, would greatly 
simplify our present school machinery and * * * greatly increase the efficiency 
of the schools. 2 

Of the county superintendents the president says : 

The county superintendency has now had a four years' trial in Delaware and the 
work of the superintendents has, in the main, been of such a satisfactory character 
that it would be unwise to think of adopting any other system. Indeed, if any change 
is needed for the better, it is that of still closer supervision. This is especially true 
in the county of Sussex, where the schools are most numerous and the school term 
shortest. 

To increase the efficiency of the county superintendents it was 
suggested^ that the term of service be increased from one to two or 
from one to four years ; that qualifications as to scholarship and suc- 
cessful experience in teaching be fixed by law, and that the salary 

1 Wilmington was excepted from this proposed law. 

2 Report for 1889-90, p. 5 



120 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

be increased. The county institutes "have been doing good work/' 
says the president of the board, and two recommendations of the 
governor are worthy of notice. In 1895 Gov. Keynolds proposed 
that advanced pupils be given the advantages of the town high schools 
and that "these central high schools should receive a reasonable 
compensation out of the general school fund to defray the additional 
expense of the pupils thus admitted." 'By this arrangement it was 
expected to relieve the pressure of congestion in the lower schools 
and at the same time make the town schools the centers of higher 
instruction. In 1897 Gov. Watson points out that certain schools 
had not extended their term as long as the funds received from the 
State would justify, and therefore recommends that the aid given 
by the State be made to depend on the length of the school term, 
Laugurating a per diem distribution. 

Some efforts, not very successful, had been made to collect statis- 
tics. It was found in 1891-92 that approximately the school popula- 
tion 6 to 21 was, white, 33,589; colored, 5,542; that 80 per cent of 
the white and 84 per cent of the colored was enrolled; 51 per cent of 
the white were in daily attendance for 8J months, and 51 i per cent 
of the colored for 5-f months, including the city of Wilmington. 
It was reported that the State then had $56,000 of surplus school 
money and that the new license law would be likely to add $50,000 a 
year to this fund. 

The president of the State board points out the difficulties in the 
matter of reports : 

There has been some difficulty in gathering and arranging statistics under the 
operations of the new law. This is due partly to the meager requirements of the law 
and partly to the fact that the incorporated boards are under no legal obligation to 
furnish any statistics to the county superintendents. It would be well if the provi- 
sions of the law could be made general, so that there might be a uniform method of 
gathering statistics, comparing facts, and reaching results. The statistics here given 
are the best that can be offered considering the difficulties under which they have been 
gathered. 

The report for 1887-88 represents the high- water mark for that 
period. The next one repeats and emphasizes its suggestions, 
often in the very same language. The third (1891-92) marks the 
ebbing of the tide, for in 1891 the composition of the State board of 
education was changed. The president of Delaware college, a pro- 
fessional educator, then ceased to be president of that board and the 
governor of the State was put in his place. The first biennial report 
after this change in the law was that for 1891-92 and the disastrous 
effects of the law appear at once. The general summary and review, 
the attempt at correlation made by the former president of the board 
now disappear, for the governor, who now signed as the ex officio 
president of the State board of education, contented himself with a 
half-page letter of transmittal. He refers to his message to the as- 



ADMINISTRATION OF THE STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION. 121 

sembly in 1891, for the reforms recommended by him and transmits 
without further comment the reports of the county superintendents. 
The statistics for the period — those dealing with the school fund, 
its increase and its expenditures — are to be had from the reports of 
the State treasurer and State auditor, but neither of those docu- 
ments analyzes or even reports in particular such funds as were local 
in both origin and destination. It is impossible, therefore, to learn 
from any available printed reports how much was raised in the coun- 
ties by contribution and how much by taxation. We must content 
ourselves with the general statements contained in the auditor's 
reports. But we have evidence that the amount then raised by 
taxes was in general much larger, in many cases several times larger, 
than the legal requirements. The statistics given at the end of this 
study, Table 3, are all that are available on the phases considered. 
They give us the enrollment, but not the average attendance ; they 
do not differentiate between whites and blacks. They are printed 
as they are given. 

Value of school grounds, buildings, and furniture. 
1891: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $523,000) $653, 744 

Kent 115,852 

Sussex 80, 996 

850, 592 

1894: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $630,000) 786, 352 

Kent 

Sussex 

1895: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $693,917) 836, 637 

Kent 155,798 

Sussex 114, 725 

1, 107, 160 
1896: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $702,937) 839, 942 

Kent 130,395 

Sussex 109, 821 ' 

1, 080, 158 
1897: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $702,937) 848, 447 

Kent 128,700 

Sussex 115, 020 

1, 092, 167 
1898: 

New Castle (including Wilmington, $675,505) 800, 785 

Kent 129,385 

Sussex 100, 906 

1, 031, 076 



Chapter VII. 

THE STATE SYSTEM: REORGANIZATION AND DE- 
VELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 



The decade treated in the last chapter is one of increasing dissat- 
isfaction and growing realization of the deficiencies of the school sys- 
tem then in use. The period of self-satisfied content was gone; the 
thinking men in the State were now beginning to realize the short- 
comings of their system and to demand something better. Matters 
could hardly be worse. (There was a State board of education with 
little or no supervisory power. There were three county superin- 
tendents and one city superintendent, practically equal in authority. 
Each of these four administered what were to a large extent two 
parallel and rival systems, one for whites and the other for blacks.^ 
There were practically no coordinating forces above them, and no- 
where does this lack of coordinating authority make itself more 
keenly felt than in the reports, statistical and other, which were 
printed from time to time. In these there is so little uniformity when 
one is compared with another or year with year that it is almost im- 
possible from a study of the same to reach any conclusion except that 
of confusion worse confounded. The system was without system. 
Some schools had more money than they could use; some had fine 
houses and good furniture; some had good teachers, kept them, and 
paid them a fair wage. In other districts the schoolhouses were dis- 
reputable, the salaries disgracefully low. The percentage of the school 
population enrolled seems to have been a fair one as enrollment goes 
in the States, but the figures of attendance are too imperfect for even 
a guess at its relative proportion. A majority of the districts levied 
and raised by taxation much more money than the letter of the law 
demanded. The law would order that $25 be raised by taxation; the 
district would raise $100 or more; in some cases it was 5 times as 
much, in others 10 times, and in at least one instance more than 100 
times as much. 1 These figures demonstrate that hostility to the 
school tax had practically disappeared. 

Then, if there was little hostility, if there was a willingness to be 
taxed and a resultant sufficiency of money, why did the schools show 
such relative inefficiency and failure ? The answer seems to lie in the 
one word which has characterized these schools from the day of 

1 See reports of New Castle County and school district in auditor's report for 1897 (Appendix V), p. 3, 
122 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 123 

their inception in the act of 1829, and has followed them with its 
debilitating influence from that day to this — decentralization. There 
was too much freedom; every county superintendent was a law unto 
himself; in matters of finance every school committee was a law unto 
itself. There was insufficient supervision and therefore little oppor- 
tunity to locate and remedy weaknesses. As a result the schools 
showed all degrees from high-grade success to wretched failure. But 
so strong had this spirit of local school administration and local gov- 
ernment always been in the State that it was difficult for its citizens 
to recognize the proper diagnosis. Their ability to do this was per- 
haps advanced by the educational clause in the new constitution, 
which was adopted June 4, 1897. 

Prior to this time the people of Delaware had been living content- 
edly under the organic instrument adopted in 1831. But that date 
was before the rise of the modern public school, and as a consequence 
the constitution of 1831 not only had none of the spirit of the new 
renaissance which made the public school possible, but was itself an 
inheritance without change in form or spirit from the constitution of 
1792. In 1792 it was still sufficient for the organic law to declare 
that the legislature should provide "for establishing schools and pro- 
moting arts and sciences." And in 1831, since the legislature had 
made but a few feeble efforts to obey this particular injunction, its 
solemn repetition as a part of the new instrument of government was 
still thought to be sufficient for a free, independent, and self-governing 
people. 

But by 1897 the viewpoint of 1792 and 1831 had been outgrown 
and the constitution of the latter date drew the broad outlines of a 
modern system: 

The general assembly shall provide for the establishment and maintenance of a 
general and efficient system of free public schools, and may require by law that every 
child, not physically or mentally disabled, shall attend the public school, unless 
educated by other means. 

The constitution assigns the income of the public-school fund to the 
support of the schools and forbids its use for any other purpose; it 
directs the annual payment of not less than $100,000 out of State 
funds for their benefit and provides that these sums should be used 
for the payment of teachers' salaries and the furnishing of free text- 
books only; there was to be no distinction on account of race or color 
in the apportionment, but separate schools for white and colored 
.children wore to be maintained; no portion of any fund raised by 
taxation for education might be used for any sectarian, church, or 
denominational school, but "all real or personal property used for 
school purposes, where the tuition is free, shall be exempt from taxa- 
tion and assessment for public purposes." 1 

Constitution of Delaware, 1897, art. 10. 



1*24 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

With the new constitution in working order and with growing dis- 
content at the manifest failure of the old school systems, a thorough 
and radical revision of the school law was evidently necessary. This 
revision was enacted at the adjourned session of 1898 and was ap- 
proved May 12, 1898. 

I. THE REVISED SCHOOL LAW OF 1898. 

The act of May 12, 1898, was the most elaborate school law which 
had ever been enacted in the State. 

The general supervision and control of the free public schools of 
the State was vested in the, hands of a State board of education 
consisting of the governor, as president, the secretary of state, the 
president of Delaware College, the State auditor, as secretary, and 
the senior member of the county school commissions as created by 
this act. These were all ex officio members and received no salary, 
but, excluding the governor, the secretary of state, and the auditor, 
they might receive by way of expenses up to $30 per year. This 
State board was to meet quarterly; it was to compile one set of ex- 
amination papers for white teachers and another for the colored, and 
in case of graded-school teachers' the examinations were to be graded 
to suit the various grades of work offered. The State board was to 
adopt textbooks and hear appeals from the county school commis- 
sions. I When appeals came up from the free colored schools the 
president of the State College for Colored Students was to sit as a 
member of the board in place of the president of Delaware College, 
but at no other time. 

The free public schools in the counties, both black and white, 
were under the general supervision and control of the State board, 
while their particular supervision was vested in a county school com- 
mission for each county.) This commission was composed of three 
members, not more than two of them from the same political party; 
they were to be appointed by the governor for a three-year term. 
They were to hold quarterly meetings and their duty was to investi- 
gate the school system in the county, the method of instruction and 
discipline, the way the school officers performed their duties, and the 
condition of school property. They had authority to visit the schools, 
including the incorporated schools, examine the papers and reports 
of the county superintendent, who was their executive officer, receive 
complaints, and act as a sanitary commission over all school prop- 
erty. They received no salary, but might be paid up to $100 each 
per year for actual services and expenses. ( It was made an imme- 
diate duty with these commissioners to divide the counties into dis- 
tricts for colored schools, but the number of such districts was not 
to exceed the number of colored schools in existence at that time.^ 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 125 

It was provided that property might be transferred from one dis- 
trict to another by petition; school districts might unite and all 
school districts in existence at the passage of the law were continued 
as such; women were admitted to the ballot in school elections on 
the same terms as men, but whites did not vote in elections in col- 
ored districts, nor colored in white districts, and the amount to be 
raised by taxation was still decided by ballot in the district. 

The supervision and control of the free public schools in each dis- 
trict was vested in general in the State board and the county school 
commission and in particular in a district school commission com- 
posed of a clerk and two commissioners, who were elected for three 
years. They had immediate charge of the school. They selected 
the site, built the schoolhouse, provided furniture and fuel, em- 
ployed and dismissed teachers, visited the school, kept it open for 
140 days in the year or longer, collected the money raised by the 
district and expended the same, administered the free textbboks act, 
made settlements with the auditor, and saw that the detailed require- 
ments of the State law were met. They received $1 per day for 
actual service. 

It was provided that certain incorporated schools should receive 
into their upper classes the more advanced pupils from other dis- 
tricts, and it was the duty of the white district school commissioners 
to make assessment lists for their districts. These lists consisted of 
the rates of the white males over 21 and the rates — 

of the personal property of all the white inhabitants of the district; of the rates of all 
the assessable personal property within the district owned by any association or cor- 
doration; and of the clear rental value of all the assessable real estate within the 
district owned by white persons, associations, or corporations. 

The property of colored citizens was listed by their school com- 
missioners in the same way. Every white school district in New 
Castle and Kent was required to raise $100; every district in Sussex, 
$60. The requirement placed on the colored districts in this regard 
was just one-half of the above. ) 

The general superintendence of all the free public schools of the 
county was vested in a county superintendent of schools. He was 
to be appointed by the governor for two years and received a salary 
of $1,000 per year. It was stipulated he should be of good moral 
character and mentally and morally capable of performing his du- 
ties. He must have had 20 months' experience as a teacher and be 
a graduate of a reputable college or normal school. His duties were 
to visit, advise, and assist the teachers, create interest in the schools, 
prepare examination papers for the State board, conduct examina- 
tion of teachers, countersign certificates, suspend or withdraw them 
when necessary, and hold teachers' institutes. For these institutes 
$150 per year in each county was now provided, as was $150 for the 
Delaware Colored Institute, located in Kent County. 



126 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

The teachers passed three examinations according to the certifi- 
cate desired: I. Orthography, reading, writing, mental and written 
arithmetic, geography, physiology and hygiene, with special refer- 
ence to alcoholic stimulants and narcotics, history of the United 
States, Federal and State Constitutions, pedagogy, and English gram- 
mar; II. Algebra, geometry, physics, natural philosophy, and ele- 
ments of rhetoric; III. "Such other branches and subjects as the 
State board of education shall direct to be included in such exam- 
inations." 

The successful passing of these examinations with a grade of 90 per 
cent for I and 75 per cent for II and III was rewarded by a profes- 
sional certificate, good for 10 years; the successful passing of I and 
III with the same grades won a first-grade certificate, good for 5 
years; while a grade of 75 per cent in I and III secured a second- 
grade certificate, good for 2 years. It will be noticed that this law 
did not seek so much to extend the requirements for teachers as to 
change the valuation of the examinations passed. 
( It was provided further that, in distributing the share of money 
due to each county among its districts, there should be no discrimi- 
nation between the districts for whites and blacks. ) The State 
treasurer was by this act constituted as trustee of the school fund. 
It was his duty to place the funds due each district in the Farmers' 
Bank for that county, and it was paid out by him by check only, and 
any balances on hand were deducted from the appropriations for the 
next year. In this way the accumulating balances disappeared and 
the school clerks no longer had the temptation to save funds in order 
to loan on private account. 

Such was the school law passed in 1898. It was evidently a great 
improvement on earlier attempts at legislation. Under it there was 
evident effort toward a closely coordinated State system; at the top 
was a State board, made up of State officials and the senior members 
of the county school commissioners. These county school commis- 
sioners as such were the agents of and reported to the State board. 
Their authority bore the same relations to the county that the State 
board bore to the State. Within the county the county superin- 
tendent was their agent and executive, and in his turn he supervised 
and directed the local district school commissioners, who came in 
direct contact with the schools, supervised and directed them, and 
were directly responsible for their success or failure. This law, much 
more certainly than any earlier law, laid the foundation for a real 
State system. 

The remainder of this chapter will be devoted to showing how these 
plans were worked out in action, and what additional legislation sup- 
plementary to that end was enacted during the following decade. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 127 

II. DEVELOPMENT AND LEGISLATION, 1898-1913. 

Information on the actual workings of the school system under the 
law of 1898 comes mainly from the few and irregular reports of the 
State board of education, 1898, 1899-1900, 1901-2, 1903-4, and 1910. 
While these are the main sources, they are both incomplete and unsat- 
isfactory. 

The new State board was organized under the law of May 12, 1898, 
on June 25, 1898. It started in well and struck in its opening sen- 
tences at the very foundations of the troubles before it: 

Owing to the fact that the present board differs so widely from all preceding boards, 
both in its constitution and its powers, in conjunction with the extreme scantiness of 
material and data on school matters left by such former boards, it was deemed expe- 
dient that the present board should make an entirely new beginning in school work 
for the State. * * * 

The board is convinced that its first and most important duty is the compilation of re- 
liable facts and figures showing the present condition of our schools as a whole. * * * 

The board finds an utter absence of reliable statistics throwing light upon the sim- 
plest facts concerning our schools. For example, there is no certain information as to 
the percentage of illiteracy among either the citizens of this State or the children of 
school age, nor whether such percentage is on the increase or decrease; nor, further, 
as to the percentage of children not taking advantage of the free education offered by 
this State. 

In accord with this purpose the board compiled and sent out 
blanks asking for information in regard to education and grouping it 
under certain headings. They collected a great mass of statistics of 
every kind, arranged and correlated it under proper headings, and 
printed it as a part of their report for 1899-1900. In that report 
statistics occupy 192 pages and make a statistical display such as 
had never been attempted before in the State. It seems to have been 
the purpose of the board to make such a presentation once in 10 
years. They were gathered again and presented in the report for 
1910, but in that case, although more complete than in the earlier 
report, they are not totaled, and are therefore of limited value. 

The State board in its report for 1898 discussed further its plans 
and purposes. These included a gradual elevation of the standard of 
qualifications for teachers: 

Delaware still suffers the great hardship of having no State normal school to qualify 
and test the capabilities of the instructors of her children. In most instances, there- 
fore, school commissioners are compelled to rely entirely upon the teachers' certificate 
obtained on examination (never an entirely satisfactory test) by the county superin- 
tendent. For this reason the board has, through one of its committees, carefully 
examined all the questions given by the three superintendents in every examination 
of teachers held since the passage of the present school law, and made such changes in 
and additions to those questions as to it seemed proper. It has, moreover, added 
botany and drawing to the list of subjects upon which teachers must be examined. 



128 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

There was complaint also by the board on the textbooks used. 
These were furnished by the State but— 

nevertheless when the board began its labors under the law, it found the State list 
remarkable for its inclusion of a great number of the poorest, out-of-date schoolbooks, 
and for its exclusion of very many of the best and latest publications. 

The board provided for the revisal and consolidation of the school 
law into a single whole, thus making it more simple and easy of 
access, and recommended amendments only in matters of minor 
detail, while the county boards reported that in accord with the 
directions of the law their first work after organization had looked 
toward thejproper reorganization of the colored schools. This had 
now been done, and there were reported 25 districts for Negro schools 
in New Castle County, 32 in Kent, and 33 in Sussex, making 90 in all. 
The crying need of the Negroes was still for schoolhouses. Few were 
owned; churches, halls, and private houses were occupied by courtesy; 
furniture was poor or lacking altogether and in some cases the only 
desks available were those improvised out of benches by requiring 
the children to sit on the floor. The extreme inequality in the 
distribution of the colored population was also a serious drawback, 
and the lack of uniformity in advancement and progress was so 
marked among whites as well as blacks that the superintendent of 
Kent County was led to exclaim : " It is almost literally true, therefore, 
that even with the free public schools of this State the education 
of the child is dependent upon the accident of birth. "_ 

The most important school legislation in 1899 was that which 
sought to advance the grading of schools. It appears that grading 
of schools, without particular sanction of law, had now advanced to 
such a point as to be formally recognized. An act passed March 9, 
1899, 1 directed the State board to select certain graded schools in 
the various communities and make them the centers to which children 
without graded-school facilities might repair from all districts in the 
county or from such particular districts as should be designated by 
the board. The graded schools accorded this privilege of admitting 
outsiders were to be certified by the State board and were to receive 
from the State $15 per term for each pupil up to 150 pupils per county. 

In this way the State provided advanced primary and high-school 
instruction for at least 450 pupils; it encouraged the development 
into high schools of the institutions that were already graded and 
opened the way for others to advance in the same direction. In 
putting this act into execution the State board selected 11 schools 
in New Castle, 19 in Kent, and 11 in Sussex as such graded schools, 
assigned the rural districts to them and carried out the law without 
friction. During the first year 67 pupils were thus admitted in New 
Castle County at a total cost to the State of $817.87, which was 

i Laws of Delaware, 1899, ch. 219. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 129 

something less than the cost provided by the State. In the same 
year 54 were admitted to the schools in Kent at a cost of $668.76 
and 46 in Sussex at a cost of $559.31. The next year (1900) the 
admissions were 67 , 53 , and 31, respectively. 

The system soon became popular and within the next few years the 
admissions into the graded schools were actually greater than the 
150 provided for by law. By an amendment in 1909 x the number 
to be admitted was increased from 150 to 250 per county and the 
compensation was fixed at 20 cents per day for not less than 140 
days, instead of the $15 per term of the old law. This provision for 
encouraging pupils to extend their courses and schools to grade their 
work was a wise one, for it relieved the congestion in the lower 
ungraded schools, encouraged the grading of the larger ones, and laid 
the foundations for the transportation of pupils and the accompanying 
compulsory attendance. Delaware was beginning to awake to modern 
life and methods. 

At this time also a beginning was made in providing traveling 
libraries. A committee of the State Federation of Women's Clubs 
took the matter in hand and were given $100 per year for advancing 
the circulation of such libraries among the public schools. 2 This 
was followed in 1901 by the establishment of the Delaware State 
library commission, whose powers were enlarged in 1903. 3 

For the first two years the new State board was occupied mainly 
in collecting the statistics which it published in its report for 1899- 
1900; in the selection and adoption of better textbooks and in 
organizing and systematizing the work of the public schools. In 
doing this it found that there was a great need of more money and 
of a a more just and equitable distribution" of the school funds. 
In his message in 1899 Gov. Tunnell points out the need for more 
money and that enough should be raised by local taxation to run the 
schools for eight months in the year. He then continues: 

Owing to the increased number of colored schools and Jjie equal distribution of the 
school fund among them, each district's share is less this year than last, but when 
it is considered that the State is still paying more than three-fourths of the expenses 
of the schools, 

it is not to be expected that the districts would raise money locally 
unless required by law and it was reported that some districts actually 
expended only $25 of the amount raised by taxation. 4 

Gov. Tunnel said in 1899 that the new school law, " with its many 
new and modern provisions, seems to be well adapted to our needs." 
But in 1901 he was also forced to say that — 

Ignorance, selfishness, and a lack of appreciation of the great benefits derived 
from higher education have retarded its progress and crippled its usefulness. 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1909, ch. 86. * See its reports in S. J., 1903, p. 206. 

a Laws of Delaware, 1899, ch. 220. 4 House Journal, 1899, p. 307. 

93106—17 9 



130 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

The people lacked enthusiasm ; they had not done their duty, and 
had not raised by taxation a sum commensurate with the State con- 
tribution. 

Nor was the method of distribution satisfactory. The funds were 
still distributed among the counties " according to their white popu- 
lation as ascertained by the census of 1830." The school income at 
the time (1900) was $134,396.50, of which $100,000 came as a lump 
sum appropriation from the State and $34,396.50 represented the 
income of the invested school fund. As divided that year, New 
Castle, including Wilmington, received $50,345.44, Kent $33,693.96, 
and Sussex $47,954.05. In New Castle $150 was given "to each and 
every single district and to each district contained in every united, 
consolidated, and incorporated district." The remainder was then 
distributed among the districts according to the number of children 
enrolled. In Kent and Sussex the distribution was different. The 
fund was first divided into as many parts as there were districts 
(including those embraced in consolidated, united, or incorporated 
districts) . To each single district one part was given, but the amount 
set apart for the districts embraced in consolidated, united, or in- 
corporated districts was united and then distributed among the con- 
solidated, united, or incorporated schools according to the number 
of children enrolled. Then, too, certain schools, by authority of the 
legislature, were allowed to receive more than their just share, being 
given a single district's share for each district embraced in that 
school. 1 

The result was that some districts with a given school enrollment 
got twice as much money for schools as other districts with sub- 
stantially the same enrollment. It was this indefensible favoritism 
that the law of 1901 undertook to correct. It sought first of all to 
provide for a more equable division of the proceeds of the school fund.* 
It required an annual settlement by each school district with the 
State auditor and a detailed report of the same. It then provided 
that the income of the State school fund and the money appropriated 
by the State for the free public schools and increased by this act 
from $120,000 to $132,000 per year 3 should be divided among the 
school districts, " including consolidated, united, and incorporated 
districts or schools," according to the number of teachers employed 
for at least 140 days during the previous school year. To be entitled 
to receive a share of this apportionment the district — 

shall have raised by taxation or subscription for school purposes during the previous 
school year, if a white school district, at least $100 for each teacher employed, and, 
if a colored school district at least $50 for each teacher employed. 

» Report for 1899-1900, pp. 4-6. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1901, ch. 112. 

3 See also Laws of Delaware. 1903 ch. 339. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 131 

If an assessment had been made for additional teachers, they 
were to be counted as employed, while payment for textbooks and 
balances on hand were to be deducted, and proportionate deductions 
were to be made for all teachers employed less than 140 days. 

The annual report of the board for 1901-2 reviews the results of 
this law and pronounces it " a decided improvement on all former 
plans." There were then employed in New Castle County 240 white 
and 29 colored teachers; in Kent, 148 and 34; in Sussex, 235 and 35, 
making 623 white and 98 colored teachers, or a grand total of 721, 
including Wilmington, and the dividend for each teacher in 1902 was 
$232.20. 

The board said at that time: 

There are still defects in our system that must be remedied. The isolated, un- 
graded school is the chief defect. It is getting more and more difficult to obtain and 
retain the services of competent and enthusiastic teachers for these ungraded 
schools. * * * We believe that the system of rural graded schools would in a 
great measure eliminate this defect. The idea is that of centralization. 

This was the beginning of the movement which a little latei 
eventuated in the consolidation of country schools, the transportation 
of pupils to school at public expense and their companion piece- 
compulsory school attendance. 

(In 1901 the sum of $6,000 annually for two years was provided by 
the State for building and repairing schoolhouses for the colored 
schools. The money was to be expended under direction of the 
county school commission and was of the greatest service. Other 
sums have been provided from time to time since that date.v 

The necessity for and importance of normal training was again 
emphasized, and it was recommended that superintendents should 
have " power to grant certificates to teach in the county to persons 
holding certificates of graduation from normal schools, good in other 
States, or holding diplomas from a respectable college." But since 
it was thought the cost of a normal school was too great for the 
State to incur, it was proposed that the State provide funds by the 
use of which pupils might attend normal schools in other States. 

In 1903 this idea was enacted into law. It was provided that 
State funds, not to exceed $1,000 per county per annum, 2 might be 
expended under the direction of the county school commissioners to 
assist in meeting the expenses of normal school pupils in unnamed 
normal schools in other States. The assistance rendered was not to 
exceed $2 3 per week and the beneficiaries of the fund for their part 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1901, ch. 115. See also laws of 1903, ch. 342, where the act of 1901 is reenacted; ch. 
351, which authorizes a colored district in Kent and another in Sussex to borrow up to $600 each for furnish- 
ing and repairing their schoolhouses. In 1909, $1,000 was granted for the colored school buildings of 
Sussex (ch. 90) and in 1911 $2,500 per year for two years for building and repairs throughout the State; 
in 1913, $2,000 annually for two years (ch. 108); in 1915, $1,750 annually for two years. 

2 Raised in 1911 to $1,500. 

3 Raised to $2.50 per week in 1911. 



132 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWAKE. 

were to enter into obligations to teach in the schools of the State. 1 
By an act of 1905 (ch. 90) they might be chosen from any part of the 
State, but in 1915 the whole system was abandoned, 2 a normal depart- 
ment having been established in Delaware College. 

In the report for 1903 and 1904 the State board turned all of its 
eloquence toward the solution of a single question: 

The great bane of our schools and the greatest handicap on their efficiency is irregu- 
lar attendance. In some districts of our State and that often, too, in the districts 
[where] by reason of poverty-stricken conditions, the public school is the sole hope 
for social betterment by the children, the monthly attendance will not be one-fifth 
of what it should be. The State money is practically wasted in trying to maintain 
an efficient school under such conditions. 

The solution of the problem lay in the enactment of compulsory- 
attendance laws and in the consolidation of schools and the trans- 
portation of children to school at public expense. The arguments for 
consolidation and transportation are given at length, backed up by 
many quotations from the experience of other States. The argu- 
ment had no immediate effect apparently. No consolidation and 
transportation law was passed at that time, but in 1907 came the 
first compulsory-attendance law. 3 This subject had never been 
much discussed in the State; Groves was against it in the eighties; 
Raub was against it in the nineties, and little had been said in its 
favor, but its time had now come. It was provided that children 
between 7 and 14 should attend "a day school, in which the common 
English branches are taught," at least five months each year, but it 
was permissible under certain conditions to reduce this to three and 
the law was not to apply to pupils who lived more than 2 miles from 
the schoolhouse unless free conveyance was provided. Violation of 
the act was treated as a misdemeanor subject to fine or imprison- 
ment. Attendance officers were provided and special schools might 
be established for habitual truants. The boys might be sent to the 
Ferris Industrial School, and incorrigible girls might be sentenced for 
a definite time to the Delaware Industrial School for Girls. The 
State treasurer was instructed to withhold one-fourth of the State 
dividend due to any district that neglected or refused to enforce the 
act. 4 

i Laws of Delaware, 1903, ch. 341. The length of teaching service demanded was fixed at 2 years 
in 1911. 

2 See ch. 163, laws of 1915, which repeals the whole section of the code (ch. 71, sec. 29) providing for these 
pupils in extra-State normal schools. 

3 Unimportant amendments made in 1909, ch. 88. 

* Laws of Delaware, 1907, ch. 121, and ibid., 1909, ch. 88. The Delaware Industrial School for Girls 
was incorporated by ch. 637, laws of 1893. It was a reform school for girls up to 21 years of age, who were 
to be committed by proper legal authority. It was granted $1,000 by the State (increased in 1897 to $1,500. 
ch. 449). See also ch. 363, laws of 1903, and chs. 126 and 127, laws of 1913. It now receives from the public 
40 cents per day for each person in the school. The Ferris Industrial School for Boys receives support at 
the same rate, with a minimum payment of not less than $1,000 per month. See the Code of 1915. The 
Ferris School was incorporated by act of Mar. 10, 1885 See also acts of Mar, 14 and 27, 1905, and Feb. 25, 
1907. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 133 

Another act of 1907 provided the machinery by which school dis- 
tricts might vote on the question of borrowing money for building, 
repairing, and furnishing schoolhouses. On petition the question 
was to be decided in an election where every person who had a right 
to vote in a regular school election and every woman freeholder 
might "cast one vote for every dollar and fractional part of a dollar 
of school tax assessed for the year in which such election is held 
against him or her respectively." * • 

This law took the power of decision out of the hands of the prop- 
ertyless class and gave it to those who paid the tax. It was, there- 
fore, more favorable to the schools than if left to manhood suffrage. 
The efforts to secure free libraries in the State were at first less 
successful than those looking to other phases of the problem. These 
began in 1901 (ch. 136) with the enactment of the first law. It 
proved unsatisfactory and was largely amended in 1903, while other 
amendments followed in 1905 (ch. 114). The lawmakers took a rest 
in 1907 and in 1909 the law was perfected (ch. 106). 

By this act a State library commission was established. It was 
composed of nine persons appointed by the governor for five years. 
The State librarian was its secretary ex officio, but had no vote, and 
the members received no salary. The commission was given general 
supervision over all libraries in the State established under the act 
and over all circulating libraries. All the school districts in the 
State, single, united, consolidated, and incorporated were classified 
according to the amount of taxation for school expenses that each 
might levy. The classes were seven in number, including a few arbi- 
trary assignments to particular classes: 

Class 1 was made up of those districts which raised $6,000 or more 
for school expenses. They might levy and raise for the use of 
libraries from $500 to $1,000; 

Class 2, $4,000 to $6,000; might raise $150 to $400; 

Class 3, $2,000 to $4,000; might raise $100 to $300; 

Class 4, $1,000 to $2,000; might raise $75 to $200; 

Class 5, $500 to $1,000; might raise $50 to $150; 

Class 6, $200 to $500; might raise $40 to $100; 

Class 7, less than $200; might raise $25 to $75. 
The districts might, when they so desired, vote on the question of 
establishing and maintaining a public library, and when so author- 
ized were required to levy and collect the necessary tax according to 
the class to which they belonged. They were then to elect a school 
district library commission, which was to have control of the erection 
and equipment of the building and the administration of the library 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1907, ch. 122; ibid., 1909, ch. 89. 



134 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

and they might borrow money for the purchase, erection, or repair 
of a library building or for the purchase of books. 1 

In 1913 the State fund for use of the commission, in addition to 
expenses and printing, was fixed at $2,000 per year, and it was pro- 
vided that whenever a school district should raise a certain amount 
of funds for library use by taxation the commission should contribute 
a fixed amount to the use of the library (ch. 116). 

The first decade of the twentieth century was in Delaware pre- 
eminently the age of improvement in public schools. As we have 
seen, there was in the State much hasty and tentative legislation, 
laws were passed at one session only to be revised and amended be- 
yond recognition at the next. These laws touched all phases of the 
educational problem, but had to do in the main with material and 
administrative rather than educational matters. Many acts allowed 
individual schools, including at least two schools for negroes, 2 to 
borrow money on the faith of the district to repair and improve old 
buildings or for the erection of new ones. In 1907 an act standardized 
the conditions under which the vote to decide on borrowing money 
might be taken. 

But the Work of the State board was not satisfactory, not even to 
itself. In its report for 1910 — the only one published between 1904 
and 1913 — it is said: 

As at present constituted, the State board of education is not a success in the admin- 
istration of its duties; being an automatic body, the senior member of the county 
school commissioners is barely initiated in the work when he retires and is succeeded 
by another, and the evolution continues, and the board is deprived of the best services 
of its members. 

As a result of this feeling, and in accord with the wishes of the 
State board, that; board as then constituted was abolished in 1911 
and a new board created. Under the law of 1911 (ch. 94) the general 
supervision and control of the free public schools of the State, in- 
cluding those for colored children, was vested in a State board of 
education of seven members, who were to hold office for a full term 
of seven years from April 1, 191 if) They were to be appointed by 
the governor, and were to serve without pay. It was their business 
to systematize and harmonize the work in the free schools, to render 
the schools more useful and efficient, and to raise the standard of 
instruction and education. They might make and enforce the regu- 
lations necessary to attain these ends; they had power to prescribe 
and furnish textbooks; regulate the curricula; determine the condi- 
tions under which county superintendents were to issue certificates 
to teachers; regulate the sanitary equipment and inspection of school 

i In April, 1916, a campaign was carried on in Wilmington to raise money for a new library building. 
Sums varying from a nickel to $34,000 and amounting to $325,000 were raised. The building will be the 
exclusive property of the library. —Library Journal, June, 1916, p. 426. 

i See Laws of Delaware, 1903, ch. 351. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 135 

buildings; and take such other steps as seemed necessary "to promote 
the physical and moral welfare of the children of the free schools." 
The State board was required to investigate facts and conditions in 
regard to the needs of the schools and might require teachers and 
school officers to furnish needed information, and it might, if deemed 
necessary, employ u a trained educator or educational expert" to 
advise and assist in the performance of its duties. The board was 
to hear appeals and make reports to the governor. The State auditor 
was to be secretary to the board, but without vote or pay, and the 
board was to fix. the conditions and regulations under which the 
county superintendents issued teacher's certificates. 

In 1910 the State board pointed out the greatest weakness of the 
system as it then stood — local self-government and taxation on rental 
values, instead of on values: 

Local self-government is recognized as the greatest evil of our present system, and 
until the administrative part of the schools is entrusted to other hands the improve- 
ment must be necessarily slow and not productive of any great good. 

A system which, it is hoped, will be recommended to the incoming legislature will 
in a great measure do away with the criticism of insufficient school buildings, unequal 
taxation, unsuitable location of schoolhouses, unequal salaries of teachers, and give 
the taxpayer and children of the county more nearly equal privileges. After having 
inquired diligently into this phase of the question, we do not hesitate to say that 
because of the system now in vogue, especially in Sussex County, there are numerous 
instances of where the most valuable land does not pay a cent toward the support of 
the school in the district in which it is located, because of the fact that it is timbered 
.and untenanted. Changing the basis of taxation from "rental value to real value" 
will rectify and remedy this injustice and tend more to equalize taxation than any 
-one step that can be taken as far as we, in our judgment, can see. 

The board declared further that "the great need of our schools" 
at the time was "more money and a more just and equitable distri- 
hution of the school funds." For the year 1909-10 the funds of 
State origin consisted of $132,000 given by the State and $29,809.55 
coming from income from investments, which were divided among 
the counties as follows: 

New Castle, including Wilmington $69, 290 

Kent 43, 460 

Sussex 60, 885 

Of these sums $11,815.45 was reserved for the purchase of text- 
books. The board remarked that — 

•great inequalities undeniably exist in the distribution of the State's aid to schools, 
but it seems next to impossible to evolve and develop a system in which there are no 
irregularities and inequalities. 

The provision for the admission of pupils to the high schools had 
not been altogether satisfactory. It was at first provided that $15 
should be paid to school for each pupil admitted; later this sum was 
dropped and 20 cents per day for each day of actual attendance was 



136 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

substituted, and "while this plan has cost the State a greatly in- 
creased amount, over the per capita system, a great many gross 
irregularities and inequalities have arisen which have caused the 
system to be in disrepute." It was then proposed to make pay- 
ment to the high school in the same way that it was made to the 
districts, on the basis of the teachers employed. The schools were 
to be graded into four classes: Those of the first class to receive 
$1,000; those of the second, $750; the third, $500; and the fourth, 
$250. 

The report of the board continues: 

Taken as a whol,e there is a noticeable betterment in all things pertaining to schools, 
and especially with regard to the advancement of the grades and curriculum, and 
there is not much to choose from as between the schools of the several counties, as far 
as competency and proficiency is concerned. There are several high schools in the 
State (outside of the city of Wilmington) that have three and four teachers each, and 
there are several that will increase their quota before the beginning of the next school 
year. 

A commercial course had been opened in one of the high schools, 
and courses were now offered in typewriting, bookkeeping, and 
telegraphy. A manual training-school for each county was recom- 
mended, and it was thought that outside of Wilmington the com- 
pulsory attendance law had increased the size of the schools by 25 
per cent, and salaries were improving, for in 1910 (p. 9) it was 
reported from Sussex that while in 1901 but one teacher in the single 
districts received as much as $40 per month, now out of 296 teachers 
110 received from $40 to $50, and but 6 teachers in the single districts 
received as little as $35, and everywhere school buildings were 
improving. 

In 1911, besides the law reorganizing the State board, one act 
provided that a half hour per week be devoted to moral and humane 
teaching, instruction in " kindness, justice, humane treatment, and 
protection to birds and animals and of their important part in the 
economy of nature. " Vivisection was forbidden, * and lectures on 
good health were delivered. 2 

It is evident that with the close of this period of Delaware public 
school educational history in 1913 progress was being made. Appro- 
priations from the State were at the highest, the income of the school 
fund was larger, and the districts were more than ever disposed to 
levy taxes for the benefit of schools. The schoolhouses and school 
furniture were improving, schools were being graded, high schools 
were developing, and the work as a whole was better organized, but 
the schools were still ruled by a purely local self government. There 
was little or no authority exercised by the State, and the people 

i Laws of Delaware, 1911, ch. 93. 2 Report 1910, p. 6. 



REORGANIZATION AND DEVELOPMENT, 1898-1913. 137 

had not yet come to realize the weakness of decentralization, but 
they were going in that direction. They had not yet arrived at a 
fixed equilibrium in the matter of central control, the pendulum was 
still likely to swing back over its old route, but when we compare- 
the situation in 1910 with what it was down to 1875 it will be realized 
what tremendous strides had been taken already toward the organi- 
zation of a real State system. 



Chapter VIII 

THE REORGANIZED STATE BOARD OF EDUCATION 
AND ITS REPORT OF 1913; THE STATE SUPERIN- 
TENDENCY REESTABLISHED; THE MOST RECENT 
LEGISLATION. 



The general assembly of 1911, after providing for the reorganiza- 
tion of the State board of education, outlined the phases of educa- 
tional endeavor which it was desired the new board should seek to 
advance. First and foremost it was to make a report on the condi- 
tion of the schools; together with a revision of the school law; the 
other two requirements were added by joint resolution: (1) To pre- 
pare and present to the next legislature a revised charter for Dela- 
ware College and (2) to evolve a feasible plan for the higher education 
of women in Delaware. The second and third of these duties con- 
cern us but indirectly, for the scope of the present study confines 
itself in the main to the evolution of the public school. 

Gov. Pennewill approved the bill providing for the reorganization 
of the State board of education on March 14, 1911. In accord with 
the terms of that act he appointed as members of the new board Dr. 
George W. Twitmyer, of Wilmington, who became chairman; Henry 
Ridgely, of Dover; George S. Messersmith, of Lewes, who became 
secretary pro tem. ; Prof. Harry Hayward, of Newark; Henry Clay 
Davis, of Laurel; John W. Hering, of Milford; and Frederick Brady, ot 
Middletown. These gentlemen organized in Dover on May 2, 1911, 
and entered upon the duties of their office. Committees were ap- 
pointed to consider the educational needs and problems of the State, 
among which were mentioned the grading of schools, improvement 
and sanitation of school buildings, unifying of courses, aid to normal 
students, and the examination and certification of teachers. The 
work which they have already accomplished has been such that it 
may be fairly characterized as epoch-making, while the report which 
they have issued as a result of their survey of the educational develop- 
ment, progress, and position of the State will entitle them to rank 
among the chief educational statesmen of the Commonwealth. 

This report was published in 1913, and as it is addressed to the gen- 
eral assembly it may be taken as substantially the last official word 
138 



KEPOKT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 139 

from the State on the subject of the public schools. The subjects 
discussed by the board include graded and rural schools; better super- 
vision ; the larger school unit, or the " representative district" plan 
versus the school district plan; the assessment and collection of 
taxes; the need of more money for the rural schools; State aid; the 
salaries of teachers; sanitation of schoolhouses ard summer schools 
for teachers. 

This was the first report of the new State board as reestablished 
and constituted by the act of March 14, 1911, and it is remarkable in 
that it boldly and frankly faces the educational conditions which it 
finds and reports them as they were without glozirg or extenuation; 
no earlier report had ever presented the situation with such frank- 
ness, and it may be assumed that it gives a true picture of the situa- 
tion in 1913; for this reason large extracts from the report are pre- 
sented here. 

I. THE REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 

One of the first duties of the board was to work out a new scheme 
for the examination of teachers. It was adopted and the first exami- 
nations held on April 6, 1912. The scheme provides that all teachers 
in the State shall be examined in the same subjects on the same day. 
The grade of the certificate issued is conditioned upon the nature and 
quality of the examination passed and the experience of the candi- 
date. There is liberal provision for granting permanent certificates, 
and for validating normal school and college diplomas upon evidence 
of successful experience. All certificates are now valid in any county 
in the State when properly countersigned by the county superin- 
tendent. In connection with these examinations, and as preliminary 
to them, there has been outlined a course in professional reading for 
teachers. 

The results of this readjustment have been to make examinations 
uniform throughout the State and to make certificates interchange- 
able between the counties. Examinations and certificates have now 
been reduced to a State basis. 

The board reports that there has been "a marked increase in the 
quality of the work of the graded schools," and says that it is due to 
the unusual interest taken by the towns in their schools: 

Perhaps at no time in the history of our State have the people of the urban communi- 
ties known so much about the actual state of instruction and discipline and been more 
keen in their desire that the schools should adequately serve the community * * * 
there are few towns in which additions have not been built or improvements installed. 
* * * The instruction has increased in efficiency. 

These improvements have been due to a more careful selection 
of teachers; among these teachers there have been more who are 
college or normal graduates; the supervision in the graded schools 



140 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

lias been closer; the amount of money raised by incorporated schools 
has increased and has been used in providing better salaries and 
increased facilities: 

The increase in the efficiency of the graded schools is especially seen in the changed 
character of the high schools. Every town of over 1,000 people has a high school with 
a course of three or four years, and some of the smaller towns maintain creditable 
schools. The quality of the teaching in the high schools has improved materially in 
recent years and the courses are being strengthened and rationalized. 

The condition of the graded schools was said to be satisfactory. 
They showed a healthy growth. What they then needed most was a 
"flexible, sensible, and modern course of study with a minimum 
requirement in every subject.' 7 This would help standardize the 
work of both the high and graded schools and make it easier for pupils 
to pass from one school to another in the State. For these reasons 
it was thought that the incorporated schools were not in need of 
legislation. 

While the work in the graded schools was satisfactory and that of 
the incorporated school needed no legislation, such was not the case 
with the rural schools, for "those most familiar with the actual work 
of these schools know that they are deplorably inefficient in many 
respects." It was said that the blame for their condition was not 
to be laid on individuals nor on the executive school officials, for 
4 'under the existing conditions, as determined by our school laws, the 
most earnest official could accomplish little." The system under 
which they were operated was antiquated, the pay was poor, and. 
bills proposed by the board in 1911 for their improvement were not 
enacted into law: 

Leaving Wilmington out of consideration, the great majority of the pupils in our 
State attend rural ungraded schools. Measure after measure has been passed for the 
improvement of the graded schools, but the rural school has been allowed to remain 
under an antiquated system of administration and under what, to most people, appears 
an unjust system of taxation. 

Some of the existing ill conditions which could not be changed 
under the law then in force were poor supervision; the small school 
unit; the compulsory assessment of real property at rental values and 
of personal property at real value; poor collections and large cost; 
separate school assessment in every single district; inexperienced 
teachers who have no supervision by commissioners; inequalities in 
taxation in adjoining districts; poor schoolhouses, bad sanitation; 
inadequate supplies in the matter of books and illustrative apparatus; 
no definitely outlined courses of study; poor home accommodations of 
teachers. 

The first necessary step in the improvement of this unfortunate 
situation was thought to be through better supervision: (1) By pro- 
vision for a State commissioner of education, who shall also be secre- 



REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 141 

tary of the State board of education; (2) by the election of county 
superintendents by the State board of education instead of their 
appointment by the governor. 

The board presents an extended and convincing argument in favor 
of these proposed reforms: 

During the last two years the board has been hindered from time to time by the 
lack of definite actual facts concerning the schools of the State, and they have been 
compelled by extraordinary efforts to gather information which should have been 
provided for them by an officer under their direction. The members of the board 
are all men engaged actively in business or professional work, and though they serve 
without pay on the board, have held frequent meetings and have undertaken to 
perform, as far as possible, the duties ordinarily exercised by a paid commissioner of 
education. 

Delaware is unique among the States in that it is the only one which does not have 
a commissioner of education or State superintendent of schools, who under the State 
board of education, is the chief educational executive in the State. Those who are 
most familiar with the school problem in our State have realized for a long time the 
necessity for an officer who could be held responsible for the full and complete execu- 
tion of the school law. Until such an office is created by law the State can have ne 
definite educational policy, no economy of administration, and no absolute and 
uniform enforcement of the law. 

After the most careful consideration of all that is involved in this matter the board 
urgently recommends the creation of the office of State commissioner of education. 
This officer should be the secretary of the board and primarily its executive officerf 
He should formulate a definite educational policy for the State and be its authorized 
leader. He should be an experienced teacher, having broad scholarship and technical 
knowledge of educational processes and administrative methods; he should be an 
adept in school legislation and an easy, forceful speaker ; he should be able to harmonize 
and vitalize all the educational forces and instrumentalities of the State. He would 
gather statistics and accurate information as to the condition of the schools as a whole 
and specific information as to the needs of different communities. As secretary of 
the board he would conduct its correspondence, which up to the present time has been 
done by individuals on the board at great personal sacrifice, and would as such per- 
form such other duties in relation to the schools (except auditing school accounts) as 
are now performed by the State auditor. In conjunction with the county superin- 
tendents he would see to the closer supervision of the schools and to the enforcement 
of uniform standards in the schools of the three counties. He would maintain an 
office in which the school records of the State would be preserved and from which 
would be issued bulletins for the teachers, giving specific information and suggestions 
in modern methods of school administration. He would, above all, be responsible 
for the complete and uniform execution of the school law in the State. 

It has long been felt that the office of county superintendent should be removed 
from politics. So long as this office is appointive by the governor it is only natural 
that political considerations should enter somewhat into the appointment; but there 
is a more important reason than this. An appointive officer will, for human reasons, 
not be as strict in his enforcement of law as he should be. He will be hampered in a 
measure in the performance of his duty by considerations of expediency. If he is 
elected by a board which will be cognizant of the fact that he has performed his duties 
wisely and well, he need have no fear that malcontents for the time being can have 
him removed from the position in which he is actually doing his proper duty. 

It will be shown later how far this earnest appeal was successful in 
its demand upon the assembly. 



142 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Iii the next place the State board presented the arguments in favor 
of a larger school unit. The school districts outside of Wilmington 
then numbered: Unincorporated districts, 73 in New Castle, 81 in 
Kent, and 136 in Sussex; incorporated districts, 11 in New Castle, 
17 in Kent, and 19 in Sussex; colored districts, 24 in New Castle, 
31 in Kent, and 32 in Sussex. There were in all 47 incorporated 
districts. 1 

The State board then continues: 

The boards of education in incorporated districts have from 3 to 12 members and have 
from 3 to 16 teachers in their employ. These boards are generally made up of repre- 
sentative men in the community, who, in many instances, have children in the school. 
They hold monthly meetings, have more or less complete reports from the principals 
in charge of the schools, visit the schools at intervals, and on the whole are fairly well 
acquainted with the work of the individual teachers and the actual condition of their 
schools. An examination of the lists of directors of the incorporated schools will show 
that in most cases the communities show reasonable discrimination in the manage- 
ment of school affairs entrusted to them. The 47 incorporated districts may well be 
left alone to act under the charters they now hold. 

A different situation prevails in the rural districts. There are 290 unincorporated 
districts in this State, each with a board of 3 commissioners, making a total of 870 
commissioners. In 19 of these unincorporated districts 2 teachers are employed, 
so that in the rural schools there are practically three times as many commissioners as 
teachers. It is probable that this system was devised to interest more fully each com- 
munity in its own school, but it has failed completely to accomplish this purpose. 
We will point out briefly the reasons why a larger unit should be established. 

1. The three commissioners in each district hold practically only two meetings dur- 
ing the year— one at the time of the annual school election in June, and one to make 
the assessment. Once the school is started the commissioners hold no meetings, have 
no report from the teacher, and the clerk confines his activity to making out the 
monthly salary check. 

A great many of the commissioners are substantial farmers and business men who 
really want a good school. A great many also are men whose only interest is that the 
school shall be kept open seven months, so that the State dividend may be secured. 
In a few instances do they visit the schools, and if they do, many are hardly in a posi- 
tion to judge the character of the work. The whole responsibility of the school de- 
volves on the teacher, who has no assistance or supervision, except in the annual visit 
of the county superintendent. The result is that the school has no supervision, 
buildings and outhouses are neglected, and frequently the school sessions are cut short 
by uninterested teachers. The only argument in favor of a local board of commissioners 
for every school is that it would carefully look after the home school. The system has 
been tried in this State for years, and the evidence is conclusive that it absolutely fails 
to do this. 

2. There are 290 separate school assessments in the single districts and 290 collectors. 
But this does not tend to accurate and close assessments and collection of taxes as 
might be supposed. The assessment lists in the majority of cases are very carelessly 
made out, a great deal of property is not assessed, and in some cases, though the in- 
stances are few now, no actual assessment is made. The only purpose seemingly is 
to raise enough money by taxation to secure the State dividend and to keep the school 
open seven months. A further and more flagrant wrong in this system is the unequal 

1 On this subject the governor said in his annual message in 1915 (H. J., 38): "Including the city of Wil- 
mington, this State has 524 school districts. Fifty of these are town schools, which the law terms incor- 
porated (they are practically consolidated). This leaves 474 rural schools, or one-teacher districts.'* 



REP0KT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 143 

assessments made and the unequal amount of taxes levied. The making of 290 
assessments by 290 different persons involves many unnecessary and unjust inequali- 
ties in the valuation of all kinds of property and the collection of the taxes by 290 
different persons is uneconomic if not wasteful; the work might be accomplished by 
a much smaller number more effectively. 

3. In many instances, the number of children in a district decreases until there are 
only from 3 to 12 pupils in the school. These pupils could easily be sent to near-by 
schools and not have to walk farther. Instead, the district, through a false local 
pride, will keep the school open, pay the teacher a smaller salary, and subject the 
pupils to the deadening routine of the usual small school. If the representative 
district is the unit of government, very small schools can be closed and pupils can be 
assigned to a near-by school at a great saving of money, and to the advantage of the 
district. When population shifts so that the school is again necessary, it can be re- 
opened by the board in the representative district without any formality. 

4. Under the present system, if two or more rural districts wash to consolidate, it 
requires a two-thirds vote in such districts before the consolidation can be effected. 
Under this provision of law, there have been very few instances of consolidation. 
Local prejudices will not allow it to be done even though the majority believe it to be 
best. Wherever graded schools have been established in town or country in this 
State, there is not on [an] instance where the people would wish to revert to the old 
system. The representative districts as the unit of government would merge the 
interests of all the people in the district, and the way would be open for consolidation 
whenever the people desire it. Until the representative district is made the unit of 
administration there can be no marked increase in the efficiency of the rural schools. 

We therefore recommend strongly that the representative district be made the unit 
of school administration in the State, the present incorporated districts as they now 
exist to remain as they are. 

It was thought that by the representative district plan the centrali- 
zation of the schools would be forwarded. School affairs would be 
under the direction of 30 boards of education of 5 members each (10 
boards in each county), instead of 290 boards of 3 members each. 
The boards would be composed of men more interested and capable 
than were now generally found on the local boards; they would hold 
monthly meetings, require monthly reports from the teachers, visit 
the schools more regularly, take better care of the school buildings 
and furniture; more economies could be introduced, and the schools 
could therefore have more money without increasing taxation; the 
new system could be put into execution without commotion or dis- 
turbance and would tend to approximate that of the incorporated 
districts, which were then the most successful phase of the school 
work in the State. 

Of no less significance or importance was the discussion on a the 
present antiquated system of assessing and collecting school taxes/' 
Here indeed was to be seen the perfection of decentralization: 

In June of every year, the school voters in the 290 rural districts of the State meet 
at the schoolhouses and determine how much money shall be raised by taxation for 
the coming year. 

After the school meeting, 290 boards of commissioners make the 290 separate assess- 
ments. The commissioners in the 290 districts then fix the rate which is usually 
different in each of the 290 districts. They then designate tax collectors, whose 



144 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

commissions average about 8 per cent. The collectors turn over the tax, less their 
commission, to their respective boards of commissioners. 

In making the assessment the law requires it shall cover the real property assessed 
at its rental value, personal property assessed at real value, and the rates of persons, 
or polls. 

To remedy this situation the board recommended (1) that the 
local single districts be abolished and the representative district be 
made the basis of school government and taxation; (2) that the 
county assessment be made the basis of taxation on real property, 
and on personal property if so decided by the board. The county 
assessment had to be made for other purposes; it was more nearly 
accurate and generally covered all the assessable realty or personalty 
and the polls, and would do away with all separate assessments; 
(3) that the voters in the separate districts should determine whether 
real property be taxed at its real or its rental value and if at the 
rental value this was to be 10 per cent of the real value. Previous 
bills had made county assessment the basis of taxation, but made 
the assessment of real property at its real value obligatory, and on 
this rock all school legislation aiming to relieve the situation had 
l>een wrecked; (4) that the tax rate in each representative district 
be fixed by the board of commissioners and that the taxes be col- 
lected by the county tax collector or clerk of the school commis- 
sioners. 

In the same manner the State board discussed the need for more 
money in the rural schools and showed that while in 1910 for 2,152 
pupils the graded schools raised $27,058.39, the rural schools raised 
only $20,447.47 for 2,989 pupils, and that, while the average expendi- 
ture per child in the graded schools was $12.57, in the rural schools 
it was only $6.86. This was the proportion in New Castle County; 
in Kent only one-third as much was spent on the rural as on the 
town pupil; in Sussex it was a little more than one-half as much. 
In view of this situation the board asked if it was startling that the 
graded schools should have increased in efficiency while the rural 
schools had remained stationary ? 

It was shown further that in general the State was then paying 
"more than 50 per cent of the cost of maintaining the schools in 
the rural districts," and it was suggested that the need was not 
"so much for more aid from the State as for raising of more money 
in the rural districts." How this desirable object was to be obtained 
was not suggested. 

The question of rural salaries is taken up in the same connection. 
In New Castle the highest rural salary was $55 : the lowest $30, the 
average $39.90; in Kent the highest was $50, the lowest $33^, the 
average $38; in Sussex the highest was $60, the lowest $35, the aver- 
age $40.50. It was also noted that the smallest salary paid in Sussex 
was $35 per month and in New Castle $30. The per centum of 



REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 145 

salaries in Sussex below $40 was 24 per cent; in New Castle it was 
33 per cent, and in Kent nearly 50 per cent. 

In commenting on these figures the State board remarks : 

It is not true, as one might suppose, that the poorer districts pay the lower salaries. 
In many cases, an actual examination of the auditor's report shows, it is the districts 
with a large assessed value of property which pay the small salaries. The low salaries 
are as a rule paid in the districts where the commissioners, having no interest except 
to keep the school open, bid for a cheap teacher, and they get one. 

In their report the State board considers also the question of the 
sanitation of schoolhouses and their discussion is more forceful than 
pleasing. They neither try to conceal nor to gloze over a discredit- 
able situation. They say: 

Under existing law the authority to enforce proper sanitary conditions in the schools 
is vested in the State board of health, in the county school commissions, and in the 
State board of education. This conflict of authority has made it impossible for any 
of these bodies to remedy serious conditions which exist at some of the schools. 

In various reports of superintendents and county school commissions attention has 
been called to the poor [accommodations] at some schoolhouses, some of them hardly 
habitable. But of special importance is the condition of the outhouses at some of 
the schools. Notwithstanding frequent notices to improve conditions, there are 
schools still where the commissioners have failed to provide separate outhouses for 
the sexes and where the outhouses themselves are in an unmentionable condition- 
This is more than a sanitary problem, it is so bad at some places that it is a moral one 
and a scandal in the community. 

The authority to oversee these mattars should be vested in the State board of edu- 
cation, as the natural body. It will have the organization to enforce proper measures 
in the commissioner of education and in the county superintendents. The conditions 
-can then be corrected without additional administration expenses. 

The last subject pertaining to the public schools discussed in this 
remarkable report is that dealing with the training of teachers: "A 
larger and more efficient administration for the rural schools, more 
money for their maintenance and better teachers to work in them; 
these are the needs of our rural schools," says the report. Better 
teachers were needed, but u the State for a time must depend on its 
present body, of teachers." The county superintendents had for 
some years conducted a summer school at Dover. It was suggested 
that this be discontinued and that $1,200 be granted by the State to 
Delaware College for maintaining a summer session of not less than 
five weeks. This suggestion was accepted by the assembly of 1913 
and the $1,200 asked for was granted. 1 The summer school opened 
in 1915 and continued for six weeks. Elementary instruction in fun- 
damental school subjects, including methods of teaching, is offered to 
teachers in the primary grades, and advanced instruction to teachers 
in the higher grades. Each course is in charge of a specialist who is 
also a skilled instructor. The faculty is drawn largely from that of 
Delaware College. 



1 Laws of Delaware, 1913, ch. 122. 
$3106—17 10 



146 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

The sections of this report dealing with the new charter for Dela- 
ware College and that which discusses the college for the higher edu- 
cation of women are of direct interest in a study of the public schools. 
After consultation with various women's federations and organiza- 
tions the board recommended that a college for women affiliated with 
Delaware College and located at Newark be provided at a cost of 
approximately $125,000. Three courses for women students were 
proposed, one leading to A. B., one to B. S., and a four-year course 
in education for the training of teachers, also leading to the B. S. 
degree. The report continues: 

It is intended that the course in education shall be flexible enough to meet the 
needs of the teachers of the State. In addition to the above courses, it is proposed to 
provide short courses open to women who are unable to meet the entrance require- 
ments for the above-mentioned courses or who are unable to spend four years in pur- 
suing a systematic course of study. The short courses will be adapted especially for 
those women who wish to prepare themselves for teachers or home makers. 

It was suggested that the expense incurred might be met in part 
by devoting to this affiliated college the $4,500 which under existing 
laws was appropriated annually to provide instruction for the young 
women of Delaware in the State normal schools of other States. 1 

This suggestion of the State board was accepted by the assembly 
of 1913. It determined to establish an affiliated college for women 
in connection with Delaware College and created a commission to 
acquire a site and erect the necessary buildings; it authorized them 
to borrow on the faith and credit of the State the sum of $120,000 
and provided $30,000 a year for five years as a sinking fund. 2 The 
Woman's College was opened with the session of 1914-15. In 1915-16 
it had 86 students in arts and sciences, education and home economics. 
It is supported by both State and Federal funds. 

In further accord with the recommendations of this report the 
assembly of 1913 reincorporated Delaware College, and, as has just 
been told, not only provided an affiliated college "for the instruction 
and education" of women, but also instructed the trustees of the 
college to organize a a department of education which shall be a part 
of the public school system of the State, and which shall have for its- 
object the education of teachers for the public schools of this State." 
The course of study was to be arranged in cooperation with the State 
board of education, and the courses of study of the high schools were 
to be adjusted by the State board and the trustees of the college "in 
so far as they are related to the terms of admission to Delaware 
College." 3 

1 This suggestion was acted on in 1915 when the assembly repealed (ch. 163) the act by which aid was- 
given in attending extra-State normal schools. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1913, chs. 117, 124. 

3 Ibid., ch. 117. See also 1915, ch. 186, where the language of the act of 1913 is somewhat modified. 



REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 147 

With the execution of the provisions of the acts looking toward 
the rehabilitation of Delaware College, the opening there of a summer 
school for teachers in 1913/ and the establishment of the affiliated 
College for Women in 1914, the State can boast that it is now pre- 
pared to give within its own borders extended and sufficient courses 
to all who seek preparation as teachers. 

It will be noticed that the assembly in 1913 and 1915 saw fit to 
carry into execution almost literally the recommendations of the 
State board so far as they concerned Delaware College and the 
affiliated woman's college. These were institutions which touched 
the public schools mainly through the preparation of teachers. 

It now remains to be seen how far the assembly accepted the sug- 
gestions of the board in matters pertaining directly and immediately 
to the public schools themselves; how far did the assembly feel 
itself justified in adopting the recommendations of the board ? 

In line with the recommendations which have been summarized, 
the State board presented to the general assembly of 1913 a biU 
providing for a revision of the school law of the State. It proposed 
that all incorporated school districts then existing in the State be 
retained, but that all others be abolished from the last Saturday in 
June, 1913. In their place the representative districts into which 
the various counties were divided should be declared school dis- 
tricts. These new school districts were given corporate powers. 
They were to be administered by a board of five school commission- 
ers who were to be chosen for a term of three years by the lega 
voters of the district, including both men and women. The voters 
were also to determine by ballot whether real value (i. e., county 
assessment value) or rental value should be the basis for school taxa- 
tion. A majority of the votes cast on this question was to settle it 
for three years. The electors were to decide by ballot also "whether 
any sum above that levied by law" should be raised for the use of 
the schools for the ensuing year, and, if so, how much. 

Special meetings of the electors might be called wheft the school 
commissioners saw fit, and their duties were particularly and mi- 
nutely defined. They were to have general control and direction 
of the schools of the district; provide, repair, and furnish buildings; 
keep the schools open at least 140 days in the year; employ and dis- 
miss teachers; expel pupils; make up the assessment list and deter- 
mine the extra taxes; provide free textbooks; make school reports; 
settle financial reports with auditor ; take steps to enforce com- 
pulsory attendance, and maintain oversight and regulation of the 
schools. 

The State board was to appoint before June 1, 1913, a State com- 
missioner of education who was to be secretary of the board and its 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1913, ch. 122. 



14S PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

executive officer. His duties were defined. The board was in- 
structed also to appoint the county superintendent. He was to be 
given a salary of $1,500, an increase of $300. He was required to 
make reports, but his duties were, in the main, advisory rather than 
mandatory in character. 

This bill was presented to the general assembly in amendment of 
and to take the place of the act of 1897 (ch. 67, vol. 21), but unfor- 
tunately neither the detailed report of the State board, which bears 
date of February 10, 1913, and has been reviewed in this study, nor 
the above bill was favorably received in the assembly or in the State. 
The report commanded little attention and the bill was felt to be 
wrong in some of its proposed measures ; and because of this hostility 
was not reported out of committee. The districts were not changed, 
and the county superintendents failed to secure their increase in 
salary. 

It was found impossible to get better pay for the county superin- 
tendents for reasons that were then well understood. The news- 
papers were in favor of this measure as a rule; they understood that 
the salary then paid was entirely insufficient to attract the kind of 
men needed, but they were not enthusiastic and apparently the 
people in general felt the same way. 

Consolidation failed because the idea was too new to the people and 
to the assembly. The people could not be convinced that it was real 
economy to do away with the old single school district, and with the 
one-room school. All they could see was that it would cost more 
money to have consolidation of schools, that control would pass out 
of their hands, that it was impracticable to transport children to 
school. They did not realize sufficiently the real advantages of the 
graded school. The landowners apparently did not oppose the bill; 
the great body of the people who would have been benefited by 
consolidation did not properly understand what it meant and were 
therefore against it. 

As to the most important item in the recommendations of the 
State board, the proposal to change the basis of taxation from 
rental to real values, a citizen of the State who urged the enactment 
of the amendment, writes: 

Everybody knew that the system of taxation was unspeakably unfair; that it could 
not be fair to tax personal property at its real value and real property at its rental 
value. As a matter of fact through all its history the land in Delaware has been 
owned in large tracts by fairly well-to-do families. Most of the farmers are tenant 
farmers. It was the old idea that the tenant living on the farm, and whose children 
went to the rural school, was the one who got the benefit from the school and should 
therefore pay the greater part of the tax . The tenant therefore paid school tax on 
the real value of his farming implements, stock, etc., while the owner of the land 
paid only on the assessed rental of the land. 



THE STATE SUPERINTENDENCY REESTABLISHED. 149 

The landowners have always been more powerful in the general assembly than any 
other element, and our attempt was the third strong attempt made to change the 
system of taxation. As the previous assembly had almost passed such a bill, we felt 
quite sanguine. The opposition was not open; the newspapers did not oppose the 
change in taxation; most of them were entirely silent on the point, for they were 
probably told to say little about it. The active opposition came from the large land- 
owners who knew that the change would increase their taxes. They did not say 
much, but as they were almost all men of influence they worked quietly and effect- 
ively. The landowner is often the bank president or the bank director or the em- 
ployer, and he is in a position to gain his end often without threatening, often without 
even suggesting. Nothing that could be said or done could make many of the best 
men see the public-spirited side of the matter. They knew the old way was wrong, 
but they would not consent to a change because it meant more taxes. 

II. THE STATE SUPERINTENDENCY REESTABLISHED. 

After it became evident that the assembly of- 1913 would not 
increase the salaries of the county superintendents, consolidate the 
school districts, nor abandon the rental value system, a separate act 
was secured providing for a State commissioner of education, whose 
appointment was placed not in the hands of the State board of educa- 
tion, but in those of the governor. This bill even met with much 
opposition on the ground that it merely created a new and useless 
State officer. The newspapers, however, did not oppose the measure ; 
they rather encouraged the project of having some one to really 
direct the actual work of the schools, but the bill would never have 
passed if the governor had not used his influence in getting it through. 
The act 1 provided that the governor should appoint "some suitable 
person" to be commissioner of education of the State and secretary 
of the State board of education. His term was to be for two years, 
and he was required to be — 

a person of good moral character and well qualified mentally to perform the duties 
of his office. He must have had, at the time of his appointment, at least five years' 
experience as a teacher; and must hold a certificate of graduation from some repu- 
table college or normal school. 

The duties of — 

said commissioner shall be such as shall be prescribed by the State board of educa- 
tion and shall be directed toward the betterment and standardization of the free 
schools within this State. As secretary of the State board of education he shall keep 
and file all documents, reports, communications, and other papers of said board and 
shall conduct the correspondence. 

The choice of the governor to fill this important office was Charles 
A. Wagner, Ph. D., who entered upon his duties as commissioner 
of education for the State about the middle of June, 1913. 

It will be seen that this act made the State commissioner the execu- 
tive officer of the State board. He was to take orders from them, 

i Laws of Delaware, 1913, ch. 106. 



150 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

to act as their secretary, and as their agent to execute their deci- 
sions. The law fixed the salary of the commissioner at $2,000 and 
gave the board $500 for expenses. 1 

An act of 1915 which had in view the general improvement of the 
schools in accord with the report of 1913 was that which provided 
$10,000 a year, beginning with 1915, to enable the State board to 
participate by way of aid to the " altered districts" in the erection 
of new or in the alteration of old school buildings, and the furnishing 
and equipment thereof. The board was not permitted by the law to 
contribute more than 20 per cent of the cost or to invest more than 
$2,000 in any one altered district nor to expend more than $10,000 
in one year. 2 

The same act., after making most elaborate and detailed provision 
for "the alteration of the boundaries of school districts by union 
or otherwise," permitted the State board to come to the aid of any 
of these altered districts (either by union or consolidation) which 
was seeking to establish a four-year high school by contributing to 
its support annually a sum not exceeding $1,000. The total ex- 
penditure for this work in the State was not to exceed $5,000 per 
annum. 3 

In addition to the above acts of general application passed in 1913 
and 1915 there was the usual number of acts of local application 
providing for consolidation or authorizing the boards of cities and 
towns to raise money by taxation or bonds, to increase school facili- 
ties, and erect school buildings. These acts concerned in particular 
the schools of Wilmington, which city was preparing to borrow 
$150,000 for the erection and equipment of an addition to the high 
school. 4 This school was also becoming a center, a clearing house, 
for the schools of the surrounding country; nonresident pupils were 
now by invitation following its courses, and for payment for this 
service the assembly this year voted to its board of public educa- 
tion the sum of $4,638.30, earned by the instruction of nonresident 
pupils during the scholastic years 1912-13 and 1913-14. 5 A teacher's 
contributory pension system had been established in that city in 
191 1, 6 but the schools were apparently not doing as well as was 
to be expected. Supt. Twitmyer reported in 1913 that nearly one- 
third of the pupils were retarded because of the faults of parents 
or because of ill health coming from curable defects. Others pointed 
out about the same time, however, that the cost of public-school 

1 Laws of Delaware, 1913, ch. 106 and 107. An act of 1915 (ch. 159) raised the salary of the superintend- 
ent to 83,000 "while said office is held by the present incumbent," and another act of 1915 (ch. 160) increased 
the fund for miscellaneous expenses from $500 to $2,000. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1915, ch. 164, sec. 2311V, sec. 39V. 

* Ibid., ch. 164, sec. 2311 W, sec. 39W. 

* Ibid., ch. 165. 

& Ibid., ch. 168. The sum of .$4,025.80 had been paid in 1913 (ch. 109) for 1910-11 and 1911-12. 

* Laws of Delaware, 1911, ch. 208. 



THE STATE SUPERINTENDED Y REESTABLISHED. 151 

-education in Wilmington was considerably less than the average of 
195 other American cities, although the average cost of textbooks 
was higher. It was proposed in the assembly of 1915, in the interest 
of efficiency, to reduce the city school board from 13 to 7 members 
to be elected practically from the whole city. The board itself 
proposed its own abolition and that its duties be transferred to the 
city council. Neither proposal prevailed, and the matter is still a 
subject of discussion (Jan., 1917). 

The assembly of 1915 further encouraged the development of 
town high schools by voting sums in payment of the tuition of non- 
resident pupils and to make up deficiencies to the Lewes board of 
education, to those of Frankford, Rehoboth Beach, Wyoming, 
DuPont, and to the Millville High School. 1 Other acts of 1915 con- 
cerned the public schools in Newark, New Castle, Smyrna, Dover, 
Milford, and Georgetown. The limit of taxation set in earlier laws 
was raised; districts were incorporated; and progress was general 
along educational lines, especially in case of the incorporated and 
graded schools. 

*r Nor were the Negro schools neglected in the special appropriations. 
In 1913 the usual appropriation for the purpose of building and 
repairing schoolhouses for the colored children was extended for 
two years, carrying with it $2,000 per year. It was again renewed 
In 1915, carrying $1,750 per year. 2 In 1913 the sum of $3,000 was 
granted the State College for colored students for a similar purpose, 
and in 1915 the assembly repaid to the college a debt of $2,000 which 
it had incurred in maintaining a summer school for colored teachers. 
This summer school had been organized in 1907 and maintained by 
private subscription for two years. It was then taken over by the 
State College for five years and maintained at a cost of about $500 
a year. In 1915 the assembly gave the college $2,000 in settlement 
of this account and provided $500 annually for the continuation of 
the school. y 

But the careful student has noticed already that these acts con- 
cerned the colleges with pedagogical courses for teachers, the schools 
of the cities and towns, the incorporated and graded schools; that 
this later legislation helped such schools as the above to raise more 
funds, to secure better accommodations, and in general to advance 
the interests and class of work for which they stood. The more 
progressive schools were thus helped by this legislation to still further 
advance and develop their work. But what of the lower schools — 
the rural and ungraded schools — what service came to them from 
State legislation in 1913 and 1915? First of all was the State super- 
intendent. The reestablishment of this office undoubtedly made for 

i Laws of Delaware, 1915, ch. 184. 

2 Laws of Delaware, 1913, ch. 108; 1915, ch. 161. 

3 Ibid., ch. 125; 1915, chs. 125, 191, 192. 



152 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

progress among the rural schools by increasing the possibility of 
supervision and making for a closer correlation. The increased 
powers given to the State board looked in the same direction, but 
beyond these two lines of improvement the ungraded rural schools 
were in 1915 where they were before the board made its report in 1913. 

III. THE CAMPAIGN OF 1916— DISCUSSIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS. 

Within recent years surveys, discussions, and investigations look- 
ing to the general improvement of the schools in Delaware have 
been almost continuous and have been conducted by both State and 
county school officers. They have not been without good effect. 
One, looking to the improvement of schoolhouses, was conducted by 
A. K. Spaid, superintendent of schools for New Castle County. 1 He 
published in 1912 a study on the school buildings of that county with 
special reference to number, character, and location. He found the 
majority of them unsatisfactory in one or several particulars and 
pointed out the necessity for consolidation and transportation. He 
even went to the extent of locating the proposed consolidated schools. 
In the centers proposed each school was to have ample playgrounds 
and gardens, and it was suggested that forenoons be devoted to lessons 
with books and the afternoons to doing things, while lunches should 
be served by the school. 

Supt. Spaid was not satisfied with the physical and sanitary arrange- 
ments of the school buildings of the county: 

From the specific arrangements which, you requested me to make, based on the 
measurements of school buildings, you will learn of the great need for immediate 
improvements in many school districts. I might say that few districts have made any 
effort to improve the sanitary conditions of their school grounds. Many outhouses 
are as small, dark, and filthy as ever. * * * I recommend that your commission 
take steps to enforce the rules. * * * The heating and ventilating of rural schools 
is a serious proposition. * * * Our present system of heating the schoolroom 
should be changed. * * * 

Then follows a detailed list of all the public schoolhouses in the 
county, showing the defects and shortcomings in each. Few were 
found to be satisfactory, and most were lacking in light, air, or floor 
space, or in all. 

In the same way State Commissioner Wagner has sought to increase 
the general efficiency of the schools through a careful study and 
detailed discussion of the subject of school attendance. His con- 
clusions have been published in two pamphlets, the one entitled 
"Public School Attendance of Delaware Children in the Year of 
1912-13: A Study and an Appeal" (Wilmington, 1914); and the other 
as "Some Damaging Effects of Poor School Attendance on Delaware 

1 Supt. Spaid resigned about June, 1913, because the salary received was too small. 



RECENT DISCUSSIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS. 153 

Children: Conclusion of the Study of Attendance, Year 1912-13" 
(Dover, ca. 1915). 

It is thought that the conclusions of these papers are worthy of 
being summarized. In preparing the statistics on which the first of 
these studies is based, the city of Wilmington was omitted from con- 
sideration and the remaining schools were divided into two classes, 
the incorporated schools, which were in most cases town schools, 
and the rural or unincorporated and ungraded schools. The statistics 
used do not cover the total number of incorporated and rural schools 
in the State. For this study there were taken 11 incorporated schools 
and 10 rural schools from different sections of the State and such as 
were thought to be fairly representative of the whole. 

It was found that in the incorporated schools the length of school 
term was 177.3 days; that the average attendance per pupil was 
127.5 days, or an average attendance of nearly 70 when measured in 
terms of per cent. In town schools an average attendance of 90 
per cent is regarded as low. To have attained an average of 90 per 
cent in Delaware would have required a daily average attendance of 
159.5 out of 177.3 instead of 127.5 days: 

The difference between 159, which they should have attended, and the 127 days 
which they did attend shows how broken and irregular or discontinuous is the incor- 
porated school attendance. Nor must the mere arithmetical difference, 32 school 
days, be regarded as expressing the difference. Thirty-two school days is more than 
a month and a half of school! This is more than one-ninth of the term! 

When consideration is devoted to the rural schools, the situation is 
considerably worse. The length of term for the rural schools for the 
State was 156.3 days. The average attendance was 89.7 days, or 
56.8 per cent of the total available period the schools were open. 
When the incorporated and rural schools are taken together, it is 
found that the 17,122 white children in these two classes of schools 
were in attendance only 63 per cent of their time. 
--"~The situation in the colored schools was still worse. The average 
length of the school term was 137 days; the average attendance for 
the State excluding Wilmington, was 57 days, or 42 per cent. The 
waste, then, in the case of the colored schools amounted to 58 per 
cent. As the entire sum devoted to the colored schools was $29,408, 
it appears that 58 per cent, or $15,191.57, was wasted by failure in 
attendance. Of this failure the commissioner remarks: ''Better 
husbandry than this indicates should be one of the first requirements 
for these funds, the larger part of which is given by the State." 

The commissioner translates these wasteful expenditures, brought 
about by poor attendance, into dollars and per cents of the school 
revenue and makes the following exhibit: 



154 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Waste from, poor school attendance in Delaware. 



Counties- 



New Castle County: 
Incorporated schools 
Rural schools 

Kent County: 

Incorporated schools 
Rural schools 

Sussex County: 

Incorporated schools. 
Rural schools 

Colored schools: 

New Castle County. . 

Kent County 

Sussex County 

Total white 

.— . Total colored 



Total 
expendi- 
ture. 



$48,355 
39,684 

56,692 

29,874 

53,635 
48,022 

7,147 
11,395 
10,866 



272,232 
29,408 



Per cent 

of at- 
tendance. 



74 
62 

70 
53 

70 
55 

51.7 
45.9 

48.7 



Usefully 
spent. 



$35,802 
24,604 

39,684 
15,833 

37,604 
26,412 

3,695 
5,230 
5,292 



179,939 
14,218 



Waste- 
fully 
spent. 



$12,543 
15,080 

17,008 
14,041 

16,031 
21,610 

3,452 
6,165 

5,574 



Per cent 
of waste. 



96,313 
15,191 



26 

38 

30 
47 

30 
45 

48.3 
54.1 
51.3 



Of this waste in the white schools the commissioner remarks: 

The waste is almost 35 per cent of the entire sum. That is, of every dollar spent 
for schools and education last year, the children got the benefit of $0.65 and the other 
$0.35 was wasted. In addition, they received lessons of careless use of this money, 
irresponsibility, indifference, slowness to perceive an advantage and to make use of 
it, which will hinder them all their lives. 

For the State at large the commissioner estimates that 37 cents 
out of every dollar spent for the education of children did the chil- 
dren no good " because they are not in school." 

In the first of these studies by Commissioner Wagner most atten- 
tion is given to a vivid presentation of the school situation in the matter 
of attendance with forceful arguments and appeals for improvement. 
In his second study he points out some of the results of poor attend- 
ance: "Such partial and irregular attendance has very damaging 
effects, indeed it has almost none but damaging effects/' for it 
brings about retardation and this again reacts on the pupil and makes 
him still less inclined to attend regularly and more inclined to leave 
school at an earlier age. Town schools are better than rural schools 
because attendance is more regular, reaching 90 per cent or more, 
and for this reason promotions are more regular. The pupils in the 
rural schools recognize this superiority themselves by crowding into 
the town schools. The State provided that 250 pupils per county 
from the rural schools be received in the town schools for admission 
to the high-school grades, but the enrollment totaled about 350 per 
county instead of 250. This superiority of town over rural schools 
was placed at about 25 per cent. 

Commissioner Wagner discusses also the high-school enrollment in 
the State and points out that while regularly about one-third of the 
children should be in the high schools, Delaware had outside of Wil- 
mington about one-half of that number, or 16 per cent, in the high 
schools. He adds: "This is a good showing when we remember that 



RECENT DISCUSSIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS. 155 

no rural district has any high school. The showing justifies the pur- 
pose of the legislature in securing high-school privileges in the incor- 
porated schools for the rural children." 

It was shown in another table, moreover, that one out of every 
five children who were attending the public schools was of high-school 
age, but was attending the grammar grades to get the instruction 
given there. This retardation, the commissioner remarks, "is the 
price our children are paying for slack and indifferent attendance 
during the early grades of school." 

In all this discussion, based as it is on sound reasoning and moral 
suasion, there is insistent urging looking toward the permanent bet- 
terment of school attendance. A school attendance law, passed in 
1907 and revised in 1909, required attendance for five months per 
year between the ages of 7 and 14. It seems to have been fairly 
well enforced, although little discussion, on the subject is to be 
found, but it is evident that the commissioner based small hopes 
on this law for bettering the general situation. 

The commissioner has apparently but one suggestion. He says: 

In the incorporated schools the decrease in both numbers and in attendance occurs 
only after the fifteenth year. In the rural schools the break occurs after the fourteenth 
year. This apparent year longer — that is, this continuing in school after the compul- 
sory age has expired— is probably due to the fact that many parents permit their chil- 
dren to complete the eighth or last grade of the rural schools, which they do just about 
a year behind time on average. If this is a correct surmise, then practically the chil- 
dren arc 1 left in school only as long as the law keeps them there. If this is correct, 
the manifest duty is upon those who would safeguard the interests of the children 
and the State to raise the compulsory age to 15 or 16 years, even if for the last two 
years only partial school attendance be required. With the coming of consolidated 
schools and good high-school departments, the wisdoiruand, propriety of such a require- 
ment could not be doubted, and it should unhesitatingly be enacted. 

There was organized at the Delaware College in April, 1915, a 
supplementary agency, which promises to be of service in advancing 
the cause of the schools. This is the Delaware Cooperative Educa- 
tional Association, which has Prof. Harry Hayward as the guiding 
spirit. Prof. Hayward is also a member of the State board, which 
about that time asked the county superintendents for a report on 
the consolidation of rural schools. 

Commissioner Wagner announced the following program for con- 
sideration of the assembly in 1917: 

1. A permanent card record system of pupils' work. 

2. Relieving schools that are too large. 

3. Assistants for the county superintendents. 

4. Establishing standard requirements of conditions for schools. 

5. Basing proportion of State dividend given a school district on its percentage of 
attendance of the children. 

(i. A minimum attendance law based on age and grade of pupil. 
7. State payment toward cost of tuition of all high-school pupils. 



156 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

8. Appointmentfof a State high-school inspector, who shall be assistant to the com- 
missioner of education. 

9. More exact report of cash received and expended by school districts. 

10. Levy school taxes on real value of real. estate, as is now done for county purposes 

11. Regular health inspection of school children by their teacher. 

12. Permission for county teachers' institute to be held jointly, or combined, in 
any- county of the State. 

13. Increase of salary for the county superintendents. 

14. Revision of plan of management of the money affairs of the colored school.?. 

15. Appointment of a commission to revise the entire school system. 

16. The establishment of a textbook depository within the State, where schools 
could order and secure regular supplies of textbooks. 

This program lias been published and called to the attention of 
the leaders of the State. It has been accompanied by two pamphlets 
prepared by the State commissioner and entitled a " Discussion of 
the State board of education's proposals for school legislation, 1916, " 
and "Delaware's school-tax system: An inquiry and its answer, 
1917," and by many short contributions to the State press. 

The proposed changes most emphasized in the campaign for the 
advancement of school, interests were the revision or codification of 
the schools laws and the revision of the method of State taxation 
for schools. 

In the mat,ter of school law, the State commissioner points out: x 

The existing body of school laws is lacking in unity, in consistency, in harmony, 
and adequacy. * * * What is needed is not revision, but reconstruction, so as to 
exclude contradiction and disagreement among the various acts and to introduce 
simplicity, harmony, and completeness by making the parts conform to the general 
principle of organization of the whole system. * * * 

As constructed, law after law from 1829 up to 1911, the ruling idea and purpose 
was to leave as much power and authority in the trust of local school committees and 
to put as little as possible into the trust of any central board of authority. The act of 
1911, by which the State board was reconstructed, marks the definite beginning of 
the policy of putting into trained and experienced hands those duties and offices 
which should be performed by someone specially trained and experienced in that 
kind of duty. The act creating the office of commissioner of education is a still 
further application of the principle of authority centered and power placed in the 
hands of a central body, to fix rules and regulations in matters where special knowledge 
and skilled judgment are needed. This does not mean that all power and authority 
shall be taken from the local districts or from the local school committees. All matters 
which can and may be decided by the common sense of the average citizen can and 
should be left to the local commissioners; all matters requhing special knowledge, 
skill, training, or experience should be put into hands having this knowledge, skill, 
training, or experience. The harmony which needs to be worked out, therefore, is 
to bring the laws passed before 1911 into relation, agreement, and congruence with 
the new principle recognized and established when the acts of 1911 and 1913 were 
made law, and put over the entire system a central authority with power to regulate 
in matters requiring expert knowledge and skill. 

1 In Delaware State News, Jan. 11, 1917. 



RECENT DISCUSSIONS AND INVESTIGATIONS. 157 

Of equal dignity and importance with the reconstruction of the 
school laws of the State is the reconstruction of the State system of 
taxation for schools. Says Commissioner Wagner: x 

The present plan of school taxes dates practically from the establishment of the 
system in 1829. For school purposes it assesses the "clear rental value of lands," 
the value of personal property (as horses, cattle, etc.), and a certain assessment as a 
head or capitation assessment. * " * Since the assessment of farms then yields 
only a very low total assessment for a school district it must necessarily be true that 
the tax rate will be relatively high; therefore, at the high rate, the amount of taxes 
paid by the personal property owner and by the capitation assessment will be very 
high in comparison with what it would be if land were assessed at its real value. 
* * * The high rate on the school assessment bears very hard on the personal 
property owners and capitation taxpayers and very lightly on the payers on "rental 
values." * * * 

Higher school taxes are not generally opposed, but higher school taxes under con- 
ditions where the biggest part of the burden falls on one class, this is bitterly opposed 
where there is a rankling sense of injustice felt toward the system. Given a tax 
system that is regarded as fair and just, bearing equally on every class of citizen, and 
increases of amounts of taxes levied are not only probable, but very certain. * * * 
By far the most forcible single objection urged to consolidation roots itself in the 
tax system. * * * 

When this was written the State board of education had not fully decided to propose 
a change in the tax laws to the next legislature. Many citizens in all parts of the 
State have unhesitatingly and unequivocally expressed their belief that reform should 
begin with that feature, since that is fundamental. 

In his latest pamphlet, " Delaware's School Tax System: An Inquiry 
and its Answer" (Wilmington, 1917), Commissioner Wagner proves 
with more detail the inherent injustice of this tax system. He takes 
a certain school district and shows how for comity tax purposes the 
assessment was $48,990, while for school-tax purposes the assessment 
of this same district, identical in all respects with that used as the 
unit for the county tax, was only $13,655. The result was that the 
men who pay only a personal property and capitation tax "pay 
grossly out of proportion to their just dues under an equitable sys- 
tem." It was pointed out that in the city of Wilmington and in the 
towns of Lewes, Rehoboth Beach, Laurel, and Seaford real estate was 
already- being taxed for schools at its real and not its rental value, 
and it was insisted that the tenant class had no reason to be fright- 
ened over the threatened rise in rents, for all landholders were on the 
same level. 

At the end of 1916 the forces of reform had not yet been closely 
consolidated, for the commissioner was careful at that time to point 
out that the school board was not then a unit in the belief that the 
reorganization of the tax system should be regarded as the basic 
necessity. The rental value idea was as old as the school system; 
natural conservatism, love for and pride in the past, a dislike of 

1 In Discussion, etc., pp. 12-14. 



158 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

increased taxation on real estate, and, most of all, lack of under- 
standing among the people themselves have retarded and delayed 
but not destroyed progress toward the goal. 

Commissioner Wagner, however, has insisted that when the taxing 
system was placed on " a basis of equity, disregarding class ideas and 
distinctions, and incorporating fairly and fully the recognized prin- 
ciples of taxation in a democracy," the most important improve- 
ments desired " would logically follow or would be easily obtainable." 

This meant the organization of a campaign of education among the 
people with the hope of bringing them to an understanding of the 
real situation, with the belief that when the demand from the people 
became strong enough the desired changes would follow. 

With this obiect in mind, Commissioner Wagner inaugurated a 
campaign covering the State and conducted by the commissioner, 
the county superintendents, the school principals, the leading teachers, 
and with the assistance of the press and the pulpit, the granges, the 
parent-teacher associations, the new century clubs, the home leagues, 
the debating societies, the institutes, and other public forums, and all 
other leaders and organizations for the purpose of enlightening the 
masses of the people and encouraging them to demand from the gen- 
eral assembly the enactment of the proposed reforms. The campaign 
was enthusiastic and State wide, and almost from house to house in 
its scope. 

IV. THE SCHOOL LEGISLATION OF 1917. 

After this story of the struggles of leaders in Delaware for advanced 
educational legislation had been written, the general assembly met in 
regular session in January, 1917, and the following brief summary of 
its educational activities, with comments, has been furnished by Hon. 
Charles A. Wagner, formerly State commissioner of education in 
Delaware, but by recent appointment now superintendent of schools 
of Chester, Pa. Dr. Wagner says: 

Two agencies proposed new educational laws in the recent legislative session: One 
was an advanced public sentiment expressing Itself through legislators themselves; 
the other was the State board of education and the sentiment behind its program. 
Among the enactments that originated outside of the State board of education were 
these: Paying all expenses of teachers at summer school ; fixing the minimum teacher's 
salary at $45 per month; increasing the annual appropriation for public schools from 
$132,000 to $250,000. The governor of the State, Hon. John G. Townsend, proposed 
and even demanded the payment of expenses of teachers at summer schools. Of 
course, the State board of education heartily indorsed these measures and threw its 
entire influence for their enactment. 

Among the bills proposed by the State board and passed were these: Increase of 
salary of county superintendents from $1,200 to $1,600 (the proposal was for $2,000); 
appropriating $1,500 annually for the education of foreign -born citizens; appropriating 
$2,000 a year for standard schools, at the rate of not more than $50 to each school; 
lengthening the county institutes to five days and increasing the appropriation therefor 



REPORT OF THE STATE BOARD IN 1913. 159 

to $200 for each institute; providing $15,000 to equal the Federal appropriation of a 
like amount for the installation and extension of agricultural and industrial education ; 
providing for teaching first aid to the injured; providing that the tax levy without 
recourse to the voters be raised to $100 in each district in Sussex County, thus- 
making the tax required in all districts equal; providing for education of the feeble- 
minded ; changing the school tax system so that taxes shall be assessed on real value 
of real estate instead of rental value ; providing for the appointment of a school code 
commission of five to unify, harmonize, and reconstruct the school system, and appro- 
priating $5,000 for the expenses of such commission. 

The backbone of the effort for new legislation centered in the last two bills. An 
inequitable, iniquitous, and inadequate school tax system is thus ended, after many 
years of injurious operation. More money for schools and a more friendly, because 
more righteous, interest in schools will be sure to result. This change was easily of 
first importance and also the most difficult to secure. Through the new code com- 
mission it will be possible to simplify and unify present more or less chaotic control 
and management, so that a complete, congruous State-wide system of control and, 
operation shall emerge. 

Dr. Wagner having resigned, the Hon. A. R. Spaid', sometime 
superintendent of education in New Castle County, was chosen his~ 
successor and entered upon his duties as State commissioner of edu- 
cation in July, 1917. 



Chapter IX 

RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 



Having traced with more or less detail the course of the public 
schools in Delaware from the earliest times to the present, it is now 
desirable to indulge in retrospect and find if possible the thought 
which may be said to characterize the schools of the ante bellum as 
well as those of the later periods. What was the idea for which the 
Delaware schools stood, and for what do they stand to-day ? 

When the schools during the period ending with the opening of 
the Civil War are considered, it is plain that the whole may be char- 
acterized by a single word — empiricism. It was a period of experi- 
ment and of trial; the work itself was known to be tentative and 
liable to rejection at any step. 

The efforts of the ante-bellum period may themselves be divided 
Into two periods. The first comes down to 1829; the second dates 
from 1829 to 1861. The first was again divided into two shorter 
periods, during the older of which the foundations for the State 
school fund were laid, certain sources of income assigned to it, and 
the fund itself slowly and painfully, but faithfully, built up. During 
these years also the first efforts toward public education were made, 
but the State imbibed from the spirit of the times, from church 
influences, from historical continuity, and from their neighbors the 
idea that public education was only for those who were unable to 
educate themselves. With this idea in mind the acts of 1817, 1818, 
and 1821 provided for the organization and establishment of schools 
for the education of the poor, and automatically the population was 
divided into two classes — those who could educate their own chil- 
dren and those who could not — and with the result which might 
have been expected. The rich did not have to patronize the public 
schools and the poor would not. Schools were organized and put 
under the administrative care of leading citizens of the section, who 
visited their poorer neighbors and urged them to accept the educa- 
tional gratuity put at their service, but this attempt to induce ' ' a free- 
spirited and independent people to have their children schooled as 
paupers proved a failure." The law allowed only $1,000 to each of 
the three counties, but this sum was more than enough to meet all 
demands for schools of this sort, and it was found necessary to cover 
back into the treasury a considerable part of the allowance. 
160 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 161 

The law of 1821 sought to galvanize the system back into life, but 
it was dead, so dead that the county officers seem not to have thought 
a report of significance or value. 

Fortunately by this one experience the leaders of Delaware came 
to realize that in their first effort at public education they were 
steering the ship of state on the wrong tack, for the people would 
not follow. 

The leaders were wise enough, therefore, to change their course. 
The idea of a public-school system for paupers was promptly aban- 
doned. Echoes of the idea are heard now and then through the 
next decade, but never again was the horizontal division of the 
citizenry of the State into pauper and nohpauper classes for the 
purpose of education seriously proposed in Delaware. 

Since the poor stoutly refused to be educated as paupers, the act 
of 1829 proposed to educate all the people at the expense of all the 
people so far as available funds would permit. Judge Hall drew the 
bill, but he faced difficulties on the very threshold. The school fund 
was not rich enough to bear all the expense; the remainder was to 
be raised by taxation or private contribution; it was feared that a 
bill with a provision for additional taxation would fail, and the pro- 
vision for local taxation was stricken out. The bill became a law 
without it. The schools were to depend on the school fund and on 
private contributions, and it broke down the first year. But the 
sober, second thought of the people was stronger than the legislature 
had realized, and in 1830 there was passed a law permitting the school 
district to raise by taxation such part of the required supplement to 
the school fund as a majority of the voters of the school district 
might deem proper. But already the enthusiasm of the advocates 
of education was beginning to slacken, for while the act of 1829 
required the school district to raise a sum equal to that to be received 
from the school fund, the act of 1830 cut this requirement in half and 
still further reaction was inevitable. This came in 1837, when a 
general requirement of $25 for each school district in the State was 
fixed as a proper contribution from the district. It must be kept in 
mind, moreover, that this law did not mean that each district should 
raise $25 by taxation ; it meant that before receiving its share of the 
school fund the district must raise $25 by contributions or taxes, 
or, by doing neither, might be allowed to forfeit its share of the 
school fund, and this way of escape was often availed of by the less 
progressive communities. In general, however, this provision of 
the law met with a fair degree of acceptance and was for the most 
part fairly well executed. 

The question of voluntary taxation being, disposed of, a new one 
soon came to the front and remained in an acute stage till the end 
93106—17 11 



162 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

of the period. This was that of general administrative policy. 
Judge Hall had drawn the law of 1829. He had deliberately and 
purposely carried it to the very limits of decentralization in order 
to encourage local interest. He had provided for county superin- 
tendents, but had given them neither a salary nor power, and it 
does not require a great stretch of the imagination to estimate their 
educational activities. He had left the entire movement of the 
schools to the decentralizing forces of the individual districts. There 
was no power above them to say what they should do or how they 
should do it. As Judge Hall himself expressed it, his purpose was 
to give each district power to say whether it should have a good 
school, a poor school, or no school at all. It was not hard to pre- 
dict what would be the general fortunes of a system administered 
on such a theory. The results were true to form ; some districts had 
good schools, some had poor schools, and some had no schools at all. 
The seed which was planted bore fruit each after his kind. 

The leader of this experiment in educational individualism was 
of course, Judge Hall. He opposed a normal school for the training 
of teachers; he objected to all supervision; he fought every proposi- 
tion that carried within it anything that seemed to make possible a 
centralization of power; he argued that the people must do these 
things for themselves, and when the State had given them the neces- 
sary authority its work was done. Devoted attention and good 
leadership won their reward. These conservative decentralization- 
ists remained in power for a generation, 1829-1861. 

But during most of these years they were not without opposition. 
Their opponents, however, labored under handicaps. They were at 
first not as numerous, and they advocated views that were more or 
less contrary to the general political doctrines of the day, and, what 
was still more important, they were not always fortunate in the 
matter of leaders. In the early forties Charles Marim, then county 
school superintendent in Kent, came forward as a leader of the pro- 
gressives and gave great promise of usefulness. In him Judge Hall 
would no doubt have found an opponent worthy of his strongest 
efforts, and the State law requiring general State taxation for schools 
would have doubtless been enacted at a considerably earlier date, 
but Mr. Marim soon ceased to be county superintendent, and the 
progressives were again without a leader who stood forth as such 
and who gave promise of being able to win from the conservatives 
what they wished. 

After Marim withdrew, no marked leadership was developed on 
the side of the progressives, but it is evident that from 1840 progress 
was being made by them. The laws were becoming more liberal: 
the idea of State support and State control was being strength- 
ened; efforts were being made to foster State- wide institutions like 



BETBOSPECT AND PBOSPECT. 163 

teachers' associations, educational associations, and an educational 
press; men were coming to think educationally in terms of the State, 
rather than in those of the county and the scliool district; and the 
social solidarity of the whole was beginning to be realized. Finally, 
in 1861, out of a system which was in the highest degree decentral- 
ized, and where every district was a law unto itself to do or not to 
do , came a new law which set the educational drift toward a closer 
State control. This law required that each school district in the 
State should raise by taxation a given amount before it might receive 
its share of the State school fund. By this law a greater assurance 
was given to the schools that each would receive the funds neces- 
sary to maintain it; the drift of education was at last turned away 
from decentralization and individual independence toward centraliza- 
tion and a more active participation of the State as such in affairs 
educational in character. The second phase of the struggle for public- 
school education in Delaware 4 now came to a close. The first period 
ended with the recognition of public-school education by all for all; 
the second with recognition of the idea that this education was to be 
the work of the State as such, rather than the work of a few indi- 
viduals acting under the sanction of the State which still held itself 
aloof. 

The year 1861 saw the passage of the first general State law order- 
ing a tax levy in all the counties for public education, and it there- 
fore inaugurated a new era in Delaware educational history. The 
period between 1861 and 1875 was then one of changing ideals, 
and a preparation for that which followed. Under the law of 1861 
the school districts were required to levy a minimum tax for schools. 
They were allowed to levy, when so authorized by popular vote, an 
additional tax to increase the efficiency of the schools, and were also 
permitted to borrow money for the same purpose. Th s gave the 
more ambitious town communities the opportunity to take over 
what was left of the old-time, local, private academies, and with 
them as a basis to incorporate and organize a system of local schools 
that were destined to become real State institutions. In this work 
Wilmington took the lead, and the smaller cities followed after. 
During this period also the first efforts looking to the education of 
the colored race were made and the feeling which looked to a general 
State organization began to make itself manifest/ Agitation began 
which demanded the appointment of a State superintendent and 
county superintendents with real powers of direction, supervision, 
and control. It was demanded also that the annual elections, held 
to fix the sums needed for school use over and above the minimum 
required by law, should be abandoned and that school taxes should 
be levied and collected just as other taxes and not by the elaborate 
and special machinery then in use. 



16-i PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

These idealists were then still far ahead of their day, but those who 
had the interests of the schools at heart and most realized their real 
needs were most insistent on the necessity of some action which 
should make for greater centralization as represented in the State 
superintendent. They failed in their efforts in 1869; they were again 
unsuccessful in 1871 . They presented an interesting bill in 1873, with 
all the details of such a system worked out, but while they again met 
defeat, their work was not without results. The public was slowly but 
surely forgetting the doctrines of decentralization in which they had 
been reared. They saw that the policy of let-alone had not produced 
good schools; they realized that the old doctrine to which they had 
listened so often — that the people might be safely trusted to do what 
was for their best interests — was not true and that a serviceable school 
system for the State as a whole could be bottomed only on general 
State law with close State supervision. The State was thinking, and 
as a result of this self-examination was passed the act of 1875, which 
provided a State superintendent and closer supervision for a system 
which was now for the first time becoming a real State system. 

The school act of 1875 provided some of the requirements of a mod- 
ern system. A State board of education was created, and a State 
superintendent, who was in reality its executive officer, was appointed. 
The law required him to visit and examine all the schools at least once 
a year, to confer with the teachers, correct their weaknesses, and re- 
port on their schools. He was made- a real supervisory officer, but 
his duties were much more than he could perform until an assistant 
was appointed in 1881. The superintendent was also empowered to 
examine, grade, and certify all applicants to teach. This was a long 
step in advance, for before this there had been no qualifications de- 
manded of teachers except the good will of the commmiity. Re- 
sponsibility to a common head made them at once responsive to the 
general desire for their improvement ; graded certificates enabled the 
superintendent to properly place blame and reward, while the county 
institutes for teacher training which he was required to hold gave 
them the opportunity for further study and professional improvement. 
There was inaugurated, also, during these years, the movement which 
evolved a little later into a system of uniform and free textbooks. The 
amounts required to be raised from each district under the law were 
also increased, and in 1879 was inaugurated the policy of releasing 
the stronger town and city schools from State control, and in this way 
giving them the opportunity of striking out for themselves at a rate 
as fast as ability and inclination could carry them. 

It was during these years also that the State began to make con- 
tributions apart from and in addition to the school fund for the 
support of the public schools. These contributions, assigned at first 
to the white schools only, were by degrees broadened so as to admit 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 165 

the Negro schools as well. These by degrees came to take their 
coordinate place as part of a general State system, and it was even 
said by no less an authority than the State superintendent that in 
some parts of the State the colored schools were in better condition 
and more efficient than those for the whites. But with all of these 
steps forward, the old law of 1829, with its decentralizing ideas and 
individualistic tendencies, was not repealed. It was merely modified 
and given a modern turn. There were still in the State various sys- 
tems practically independent of each other. The counties were inde- 
pendent of each other; within the counties were two systems, one 
for whites, another for blacks, both being without the coordinating 
authority of a county superintendent; the white system in turn was 
divided into incorporated and unincorporated schools and so were 
the blacks. The county systems, white and black, acknowledged 
only the common authority of the State superintendent. The city 
of Wilmington was entirely independent of the State system. It 
had no lord or master except its own board and city superintendent 
and the laws under which they administered its educational affairs. 
Unfortunately, moreover, the progress accomplished under the 
administration of a State superintendent was not sufficiently appre- 
ciated to insure the permanency of his office. It was abandoned by 
the act of 1887 and the schools were left under the care of a State 
board which had no agent to carry out its will. In the place of this 
general State agent there were to be appointed county agents — 
superintendents. But while this was a backward step it was per- 
haps not so great as it might seem, for the State superintendent had 
not had any control over receipts and expenditures, and his authority 
had been in the main hortatory only. The superintendent's duty of 
visiting was taken over by the new county superintendents, who also 
examined the teachers, but certificates were now issued by the State 
board. The comity superintendents were, within the limits of their 
jurisdiction, practically independent, and the school districts within 
the same limits entirely so, and while it might have been possible to 
fuse the various local miits of the public schools into a single county 
system, there was now no controlling superior authority to coordinate 
and weld them into a single State whole. This might have been 
done by a strong State superintendent with extensive powers, but 
his office had been abolished and its place taken by a State board 
which had small power and was composed of individuals who had 
their own private affairs to demand their attention. It would seem 
that the good work done toward unifying the system under Groves 
and Williams was all to be lost and that the heyday of decentraliza- 
tion was coming into its own again. Nor was this supposition far 
from right. The comity systems, the city, town, and independent 
systems all went at their own gait. They gave little attention to the 



166 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

county superintendents, less to the State board, and if we are to 
judge by the printed reports these State and county authorities gave 
little to them, for while there were biennial reports published between 
1887 and 1892 there was apparently no other till 1898, when the 
decadent condition of the schools forced the friends of public educa- 
tion to exert themselves vigorously in its behalf. The school district 
was still the basis for educational administration and taxation. That 
it was too small was acknowledged, but conservatism was still more 
powerful than all the agitation of school leaders; the incorporated 
districts were loth to give up any of the privileges which they had 
secured, and decentralization was still doing its deadly work. 

The agitation resulted, however, in the reorganization of 1898, 
which gave the State board a new lease of life, and on a basis essen- 
tially different from what it had had during the preceding 11 years. 
Quickened and enlivened and with such new lease of power, it be- 
stirred itself and attained success in building up the schools, but the 
main difficult} 7 — the old one of decentralization — had not been 
removed. 

The State board of 1898 was an improvement over its predecessors: 
the new board of count v school commissioners with a county super- 
intendent as their agent was a step in advance. The State board 
set various ideals before it toward which it was working. These 
included the elevation of the standard of qualification of teachers, 
and in the next few years the State provided that certain candidates 
for teachers' positions should be prepared for their work in schools 
outside the State at State expense; it improved the quality of the 
textbooks used; it provided for the revisal, consolidation, and publi- 
cation of the whole body of school law; it advanced the grading of 
schools, and encouraged certain selected incorporated institutions to 
develop into high schools by sending to them at public expense the 
more promising and advanced pupils in the lower schools. But 
there was a lack of money, and the methods of distributing the State 
funds were antiquated. The law of 1901 undertook to correct this 
situation by fixing on the number of teachers and the length of 
school terms as the proper basis of distribution. The State now 
began also to enter more and more upon a deliberate plan to provide 
better schoolhouses, especially for the Negroes, and this was followed 
a little later by a forward move in the matter of the consolidation of 
rural schools and transportation of pupils. These in turn preceded 
the doctrine and practice of compulsory attendance (1907), while 
serious and successful efforts were made to hasten the development 
of traveling and free libraries. 

In the matter of funds little advancement had been made, for 
funds were still entirely in local hands; they were raised and dis- 
tributed locally: there was no accounting to a central authority: 



RETROSPECT AND PROSPECT. 167 

and on the financial side the ways of thought were still along lines 
of decentralization. In the supplemental agencies, however, there 
was during the first decade of this century very much advance, while 
the character and extent of the general progress between 1880 and 
1910 may be shown statistically by the following extracts from the 
census : 

Total number of illiterates 10 years of age and over: 

1880 19,414, or 17.5 per cent, 

1890 18,878, or 14.3 per cent, 

1900 17,531, or 12 per cent. 

1910 13,240, or 8.1 per cent, 

Native white illiterates 10 years of age and over: 

1880 6,630, or 8.1 per cent, 

1890 6,068, or 6.2 per cent, 

1900 6,072, or 5.6 per cent. 

1910 3,525, or 2.9 per cent. 

Foreign white illiterates 10 years of age and over: 

1880 1,716, or 18.5 per cent. 

1890 2,118, or 16.8 per cent. 

1900 2,476, or 18.3 percent, 

1910. 3,359, or 19.8 per cent, 

Negro illiterates 10 years of age and over: 

1880 11,068, or 57.5 per cent. 

1890 10,692, or 49.5 per cent, 

1900 8,983, or 38.1 percent. 

1910 6,345, or 25.6 per cent, 

Illiterates 10 to 20 years of age, inclusive: 

1880 5,017, or 15.6 per cent, 

1 1890 2 3,197, or 8.9 per cent. 

1 1900 2,171, or 5.8 per cent, 

1910 1,223, or 2.9 per cent, 

In 1911, in response to a demand from the State board itself, 
that organization was abolished by law, and another, with longer 
tenure of office and more centralized powers of action, was constituted 
in its place. This is the board now in existence. Their first duty 
was to systematize and harmonize the work of the schools. They 
began by securing the appointment of a new executive officer — a 
State superintendent, or as he is called in Delaware, a State commis- 
sioner of education. They have been seeking also to advance the 
cause of centralization in the State, and there has been also noticeable 
improvement in the matter of grades and curriculum. 

When the State board was reorganized in 1911, its work along 
three lines was marked out for it. The first was to make a report on 
the public schools, the second had to do with Delaware College, and 

1 10-19 years inclusive. 2 Estimated. 



168 PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

the third with the question of the higher education of women, but 
none of these plans had to do in particular with the hope for a greater 
centralization of the public-school system. Their report was pub- 
lished in 1913, and in it they boldly and frankly took their stand 
against the pet hobby of the old system — the independent school 
district. They pointed out that the unit in use was too small and 
advocated the "representative district" as a more suitable unit. 
They secured in 1912 a general and uniform examination of teachers. 
The graded and incorporated schools were then satisfactory, but the 
rural ungraded schools were not satisfactory, and this was due 
neither to individuals nor school officers, but to the law, to the pre- 
vailing theories of local self-government and taxation on rental 
values. This was the rock wall against which they found them- 
selves, and while the board won its point in the matter of Delaware 
College, in that of the college for women, and in that for the appoint- 
ment of a State commissioner, it then failed in those pertaining to 
the larger unit of organization and taxation for schools. 

The State board and the State commissioner, though defeated in 
1913, renewed their efforts in 1915, but with small success. Then 
came the vigorous and aggressive campaign of 1916-17, engineered 
and organized by Commissioner Wagner and promoted by all friends 
of education. The campaign then undertaken met with more than 
the anticipated success. The main bulwark of the conservative 
element — taxation on rental values — has been repealed, the burden 
of taxation is now more evenly distributed, and it seems evident that 
a new era of prosperity has dawned for the schools of the State. 



PUBLIC SCHOOL STATISTICS, 1832-1914. 

Table 1. — School population, teachers, property, school year, enrollment, attendance — 

In white schools only. 



Year. 


School i 

popula- Teachers. 
tion,6-21.| 


Schools. 


Monthly 
salary. 


Days in j Value of 
school | all school 
year. | property. 


Total 
school 
enroll- 
ment. 


Average 

school 

attend- 

ence. 


Per cent 
in average 
attend- 
ance. 


1875 




527 
513 


370 
404 
507 
512 
515 
544 
562 


1 S29. 53 


144 




21,587 
23.587 
23,830 
25, 053 






1877 


31,849 


33. 08 150 


3484,361 




1878 


31,849 513 
31,505 536 
33,133 545 
35,069 546 
36,468 635 


1 33. 08 
27.84 
30.95 
32.31 
32.40 


150 
150 
156 
157 
168 




1880 


440,788 
453,274 
608, 056 
733,032 




1882 

1884 

1886 

1887 


23,450 

27,037 

29, 421 

2 26, 578 


15,556 ! 66.3 

17,952 64.4 

19,235 65.4 

2 lfi.Sfifl fil.fi 


1888... 




428 




167 
175 
175 
175 




2 26, 342 i 2 16, 369 62. 


1889 


33,589 ' 605 
33,589 : 605' 




811, 749 
811, 749 
850,592 




1890 








1891 


469 






28, 667 






1892 












1893 



















1894 






649 
685 
715 
677 
704 




173 

172 




28. 412 
29,850 
31,181 
29, 353 
30,367 






1895 









1, 107, 160 
1,080,168 
1,092,167 






1896 








176 
166 
182 






1897 










1898 










1899 


" 












1899-1900 3 . 





579 


430 






368,472 


25,870 



















1 Men only. 

2 Figures used are those for Kent and Sussex, same in 1887 and 1888. 
8 Excludes Wilmington. 



169 



170 



PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Table 2. — School receipts and expenditures, State only. 



Delaware school fund. 



Year. 



i Dividends 

and 

interest 

received. 



1876. 
1882. 
1887. 



1890. 
1891. 
1892. 
1893. 
1894. 
1895' 
1896 i 
1897. 



$29,993.25 
| 30,385.00 
30,376.50 
! 30,638.50 
! 30,182.50 
i 30,638.50 
i 32,282.50 
i 30,790.50 



1900. 
1901. 
1902. 
1903. 
1904. 
1905. 
1906. 
1907. 
1908. 
1909. 
1910. 
1911. 
1912. 
1913. 
1914. 



29,818.50 
29,744.50 
30,118.25 
33,727.00 
34,019.75 
34,467.00 
40,757.75 
40,053.50 
54,303.50 
40,714.55 
41,375.60 
26,649.35 
56,201.85 
41,375.60 
41, 675. 60 
41,099.35 
42,051.85 
41,575.60 



Total re- 
ceipts. 



$30, 
39, 
U01, 
illl, 
1101, 
1126, 
1179, 
1182, 
2 221, 
2 165, 
2 196, 
2 173, 
2 240, 
M 140, 
7 196, 
7 >s 161, 
5 177, 
&177, 
i° 180, 
io 187, 
io 209, 
io 188, 
io 195, 
io 180, 
io 193, 
io 189, 
io 189, 
io 188, 
io 188, 
io 180. 



904. 15 
141. 72 
884.21 

615. 21 
555.01 
862. 60 
812. 47 
421.54 
133. 86 
963. 67 
788. 69 
247. 69 
643. 29 
988. 49 
725.88 
364. 35 
011.16 

400. 22 
757. 75 
100.50 
018.41 
207.44 
710.69 
130.07 
383.63 
220.63 
700.85 
355. 49 
733. 69 
355.07 



Total 
disburse- 
ments. 



$30,904.15 

39, 141. 72 

80, 195. 93 

96,846.94 

86,098.31 

106,452.15 

146,244.97 

138,146.72 

3 212,923.42 

H36,262.59 

3180,771.36 

3137,793.97 

3222,868.23 

3 98,286.06 

8174,698.57 

138, 414. 54 

3154,097.50 

170,095.24 

166,364.53 

164,589.25 

3193,541.09 

172,001.12 

174,229.97 

174,948.89 

177,638.60 

173,635.00 

174,490.34 

173,673.65 

173, 146. 79 

174,315.71 



Balance. 



1 Total 

i paid for 
Market j free text- 
value of j books, 
fund . ! 



$21, 688. 28 
14,768.27 
15,456.70 
20,410.45 
33,567.50 
44, 274. 82 

8, 210. 44 
29,701.08 
16,017.33 
35,453.39 
17,775.06 
42,702.43 
22,027.31 
22,949.81 
22, 913. 66 

7,304.98 
13,698.20 
22,511.25 
15,477.32 
16,206.32 
21, 480. 72 

5, 181. 18 
15,745.03 
15,585.63 
15,210.51 
14,681.84 
15, 586. 90 
15,039.36 



$448,999 
495,749 
541, 720 
541,720 
546, 890 
546,890 
544, 742 
544,742 
544, 742 
544,742 



546,577 



692,930 
635,542 
900,672 
900,672 
915.016 
914,922 
938,097 
938,171 
944, 407 
944,407 
944,407 
944,407 
944,407 
944,407 
944,407 
944,407 



$5,879.45 



17,228.20 

12,608.73 

7,607.14 



5,910.42 

9,338.59 
10,482.97 
18,749.50 

8,510.58 
17,286.87 
12,667.89 

5,538.17 
11, 414. 60 
11,409.01 
11,683.29 
11,507.48 
12,217.67 
11,815.45 
11,686.19 
12,039.36 
12,754.63 
12,214.21 



i Includes $25,000 direct appropriation from State. 

2 Includes loans to State repaid. 

3 Includes temporary loans to State. 

* From auditor's reports, 1895-96; other figures from treasurer's reports. 

5 Includes direct appropriation of $120,000 from State. 

6 Includes $47,000 part appropriation under constitution of 1897. 

7 Includes $100,000 direct appropriation from State. 

8 Includes $42,702.43 paid to general fund. 

9 Includes $5,000 loan to school fund. 

10 Includes direct appropriation of $132,000 from State. The total State and county receipts for educa- 
tion and the total State and county expenditures for the same, 1905-1907, were as follows: In 1905, receipts, 
$525,801, expenditures, $519,351; in 1906, receipts, $532,457, expenditures, $501,746: in 1907, receipts, $600,636. 
expenditures, $553,249. Unfortunately for the student, the Delaware system does not demand detailed 
statements from the local authorities and they are seldom made. 



PUBLIC SCHOOL STATISTICS, 1832-1914. 



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BIBLIOGRAPHY. 



1. PRIMARY SOURCES. 

Acrelius, Isaac. New Sweden or the Swedish settlements on the Delaware. Trans. 
by Nicholas Collin. In New York Historical Society Collections, 1841, 2 ser., 
vol. 1. 

Auditor's reports, x — 1915. 

The whole series of auditor's reports, from the earliest times to the present contain much material 
on the financial side of the school question. 

Barnard's Journal of Education. Articles on education in Delaware: I. p. 373-74; 
XVI. 1866, pp. 127-29, 369-72; XVII. 1867-8, p. 807; XXIV. 1873, p. 239. 

Bassett, Ebenezer D. Speech of Ebenezer D. Bassett, of Philadelphia, at the anni- 
versary of the Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education 
of the Colored People, held in Institute Hall, February 28, 1868. [Philadelphia, 
1868.] 
Caption as above; broadside, 11.; in Library of Congress. 

Conrad, Henry C. A glimpse at the colored schools of Delaware. Wilmington, Del., 

1883. 16 p. 8° 
Constitutions, Federal and State. Edited by Francis Newton Thorpe. 
Delaware Association for the Moral Improvement and Education of the Colored 
People. 

Reports (not seen. See Hasse's Delaware Documents, p. 55) for: 1868 (February), 23 p., in New 
York Public Library; 1869 (February), 24 p., in Wilmington Institute Free Library; 1870 (March), 40 
p., in Wilmington Institute Free I ibrary.. 
Reports summarized in Annual Reports of the U. S. Commissioner of Education for 1871, p. 115-118; 

1872, p. 55-56: 1873, p. 63-64; 1874, p. 56. 
Other reports of this association were published as follows (see Hasse in Delaware Documents, p. 55) . 
[2] 1877-78, Wilmington, 1878, 8 p.; [3] 1878-79, Wilmington, 1879, 8 p.; [4] 1879-80, Wilmington, 1880, 
8 p.; [5] 1880-81, Wilmington, 1881, 8 p.; [6] 1881-82, Wilmington, 1882, 12 p. 
These have been summarized as follows: 

[2] 1877-78 in 3rd A. R. Supt. Free Sch., 1877-8, p. 67-70; [4] 1879-80 in 5th A. R. Supt. Sch., 1879-80, 
p. 27-31; [6] 1881-82 in 7th A. R. Supt. Free Sch., 1881-82, p. 38-43; 8. 1883-84 in 9th A. R. Supt. Free 
Sch., 1884, p. 111-117; 10. 1886 in 11th A. R. Supt. Free Sch., 1886, p. 57-62; 12. 1888, in Bien. R. Supt. 
Free Sch., 1888, p. 69-73. 
See also Hasse's Delaware Documents, p. 55; No. 6 is in L. C; others in Bureau of Education. 

Delaware Educational Directory. 1914-1915 [Wilmington, 1915]. 1915-1916 [Wil- 
mington, 1916]. 

Delaware School Journal. 

Published at Wilmington, Delaware, by Dr. A. H. Grimshaw, numbers being issued for November 
and December, 1854; January and February, 1855, being volume I, Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4. 
Apparently no other numbers issued. U. S. Bureau of Education has Nos. 1 and 3. 

Delaware State Normal University. 

Reports and catalogues (both in one), 5 numbers, 1866-71. 
A private institution. 

176 



BIBLIOGRAPHY. 177 

Free Schools. Reports of State Superintendent and State Board of Education. 
The following have been seen and are supposed to be all that have been published: 

1. Reports of State Superintendent: 

1st Annual, year ending April 1, 1876; 3d Annual, year ending April 1, 1878; 5th Annual, year end- 
ing December 1, 1880; 7th Annual, year ending December 1, 1882; 9th Annual, year ending December 
1, 1884, also in H. J., 1885, p. 67-132; 11th Annual, year ending December 31, 1886, also in H. J., 1887, 
p. 830-919. 

The 2d, 4th, 6th, 8th, and 10th reports seem not to have been printed. 

2. Reports of State Board of Education: 

Biennial report, period ending December 31, 1888 (also in H. J., 1889, Appendix, 247-57); biennial 
report, period ending December 1, 1890 (also in H. J., 1891, Appendix G, 117-218); biennial report, period 
ending December 31. 1892; report for 1898; biennial report for 1899-1900 (statiscical); biennial report for 
1901-2; biennial report for 1903-4; statistical report for 1910; report, 1913. 

All the above reports are in the library of the U.S. Bureau of Education or in the Library of Congress. 

General Assembly. Senate and House Journals, 1796-1861 and later. 

Those in the Library of Congress have been seen and examined. This set is fairly complete, but not 
entirely so. 

Hall, Willard. Address [on the new school law of 1829]. Extracts in Annual Report 

of the U. S. Commissioner of Education, 1871, p. 109-11. 

Issued for circulation among the people of the State soon after the enactment of the law of 1829. 

Letter to Henry Barnard, June, 1843, reviewing the fortunes of the Delaware 

public schools down to that date. . 2 p. 

MS. in U. S. Bureau of Education. 

Reports to the General Assembly on the condition of the free schools of New 

Castle County. H. J., 1849, p. 214-229; same report in S. J., 1849, p. 120-134. 
Judge Hall was the most prolific of the writers on public schools during the antebellum period. 
Most of his work appears in the proceedings of the New Castle County School Conventions. 

Hasse, Adelaide R. Index of economic material in documents of the States of the 

United States. Delaware, 1789-1904. 

The term "economic" is interpreted very broadly; p. 46-67 list the educational material. 
Laws, Codes and Revisals, 1797-date. 
Laws, Session, 1792-date. 
New Castle County. Proceedings of School Convention of 1836, 1837, 1838, 1839, 

1840, 1843, 1844, 1845, 1846, 1847, 1848, 1849, 1851, 1852, 1853, 1854. 
In Bureau of Education library. 

Newlin, E. J. An address on the subject of normal schools, delivered before the Legis- 
lature of Delaware, February 17, 1857. Dover, Del., Delaware State Reporter, 
1857. 18 p. 8°. 

School laws of the State of Delaware, 1841. Wilmington, Del., 1841. 
A republication, not a codification. 

Same, 1868. Dover, 1868. 

A carefully revised and digested code of the school laws as they then were, prepared and published by 
order of the Levy Court of Kent County. Contains also in abridged form Judge Hall's Address and 
Report of 1841. 

School law of Delaware, with an act relating to physiology and hygiene in 

public schools, passed in 1887. Dover, 1887. 8 p. 8°. 
Same, 1898. Dover, 1899. 

Revised school laws as enacted May 12, 1898, being ch. 67 of vol. 21, pt. 1, Laws 
of Delaware. 



Same, 1899, 1901, 1903. Dover, 1903. 



Amendments only to Code of 1898. 

— Same, 1898-1907. Dover, 1908. 

Code of 1898, with additional laws through 1907. 

— Same, 1898-1909. Smyrna, Del., 1909. 
Code of 1898, with additional laws through 1909. 

93106—17 12 



ITS PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION IN DELAWARE. 

Spaid, A. R. Report on School buildings . . of . . . New Castle 

County. Wilmington [1912]. 

Troost, Gerard, translator. Extracts from the Voyages of David Pieterszen de Vries. 
In New York Historical Society Collections, 1841, 2 ser., vol. 1. 

United States. Census Reports, 1840-1910. 

Wagner, Charles A., Ph. D. Public-school attendance of Delaware children in the 
year of 1912-13: A study and an appeal. Wilmington, 1914. 

Some damaging effects of poor school attendance on Delaware children: Con- 
clusion of the study of attendance, year 1912-13. Dover [ca. 1915]. 

Discussion of the State Board of Education's proposals of school legislation. 

[1916.] 

Delaware school tax system: An inquiry and its answer. Wilmington, 1917. 



Wilmington. Reports concerning the public schools, 1872-1911. 
2. SECONDARY SOURCES. 

Bates, Daniel M. Memorial address on the life and character of Willard Hall. Wil- 
mington, Del., 1879. 60 p. port. 8°. 

Conrad, Henry C. History of Delaware. Wilmington, Del., 1908. 3 v. 
Has chapter on education in Delaware. 

Delaware Historical Society. Celebration of the 300th anniversary of the landing of 
De Vries Colony at Lewes, Del., September 22, 1909. Addresses of Rt. Rev. 
F. J. Kinsman and Hon. George Gray. Publications of the Delaware Historical 
Society, No. 54, 1909. 

Groves, James H. History of free schools in Delaware. In Report of State Superin- 
tendent for 1879-80, p. 43-54. 

Jameson, J. Franklin. William Usselinx, founder of the Dutch and Swedish West 
India Companies. In American Historical Association, Papers. 1887. Vol. II, 
p. 149-382. 

McCarter, James M., and Jackson, Benjamin F., editors. Historical and biographical 
encyclopaedia of Delaware. Wilmington, Del., 1882. 

Contains article on free school, by J. H. Groves; history of education of the colored population, by 
H. C. Conrad, p. 75-87. 

Powell, Lyman Pierson. The history of education in Delaware. Washington, 1893. 
A well-prepared, well-arranged, and luminous presentation of the general subject of education in 
the State, by the present president of Hobart College. Gives a chapter (p. 138-171) on the free-school 
system, and affixes an extensive bibliography. 

Scharf, John Thomas. History of Delaware, 1609-1888. Philadelphia, 1888. 2 v. 
Has chapters on public education. 

Wickersham, James P. History of education in Pennsylvania. Lancaster, Pa., 1886. 
A valuable and illuminating volume for the early history of Delaware. 



INDEX. 



Academies, statistics (1840-1860), 72. 

Agricultural Society of Sussex County, incorporated, 70. 

Attendance, statistics, 154. 

Average school attendance, statistics, ]69, 171-175. 

Bassett, E. D., on Negro education, 99. 

Bates, D. M., on career of Wdlard Hell. 36-37. 

Bennett, Gov. C. P., message to assembly on eou_ of - on 45 

Bibliography, 176-178. 

Board of education. S-& State board of education. 

Brandy wine Academ; , New Castle County, incorporated, 22. 

Brandywine Manufacturers' Sunday School, 27-28. 

Burton, Gov. William, on public schools, 66. 

Causey, Gov. P. F., on public schools. 65-66. 

Centralization of education, advocates in Delaware. 51-52; growth in demand for, 

44-45; opinion of Judge Hall, 57. 
Clawson, J. E., on school taxation, 78. 

Colleges, statistics (1840-1860), 72; affiliated with Delaware College, 146-147. 
Collins, Gov. John, message to assembly on education, 29-30. 
Colonial growth and development, 7-18. 
Comegys, Gov., message to assembly on education, 50-51. 
Commercial education, 136. 

Commissioner of education. See State superintendent. 
Compulsory attendance law, 132. 
Conventions, educational, New Castle County, 44-66. 
Corbit Library, incorporation into school system, 70. 

County superintendent of schools, powers and duties, 112, 125; report on, 119. 
Delaware Association. See Negroes, education. 
Delaware College, affiliated college for women, 146-147; education of teachers, 70-71; 

foundation, 17. 
Delaware Cooperative Educational Association, work, 155. 
Delaware School Journal, establishment, 67-68. 

Delaware State Normal University (1866-1871), establishment and work, 79-81. 
Delaware State Teachers' Association, organized, 91. 
De Vries, D. P., early voyage, 7. 

Dover, early education, 21; incorporation. 22; reorganized. 76. 
Education under Dutch and Swedish regimes, 11-14. 
Educational conventions. Sec Conventions, educational. 
Educational individualism. 162. 

English settlers before the Revolution, education. 14-18. 
Enrollment, statistics, 169. 
Expenditures, by counties, statistics, 171-175. 
Ferris, Benjamin, on intermingling of Swedes and Dutch, 10. 
Free school law (1829), later amendments, 38-44; (1875), accomplishments, 85-92. 
Georgetown School, Sussex County, incorporated, 22. 
Grading of schools, legislation, 128-129. 

Groves, J. H., administration of, 86-91; on act of 1861, 74; report on schools. 87, 89-91. 

179 



180 



INDEX. 



Hall. Gov. David, and first official recognition of public education, 21. 
Hall Willard, and educational individualism, 162; educational influences, 36-38; on 
condition of education in Delaware, 21; report on educational legislation, 38-41, 
47- 18; formal report on public schools, 52-54-, report on schools of New Castle 
County, 58-60; report on Wilmington schools, 94-95. 
Haslet, Gov. Joseph, message to assembly on public education, 22-23. 
High schools, admission of pupils, 135-136. 
Illiteracy, statistics, 48, 72, 167. , 

Income/colored schools, 104; statistics for the years 1840-1860, 72. 
Incorporated town and city schools, development and statistics 92-98. ^ 
Kinsman, F. J., on early Dutch settlement, 7; on social life of the Dutch, 14. 

&£?£*£* ** -, i r, 2 f T 13 ' 174 - 137 ' l58 - l59; recommen " 

a ' \ati "m^ -*" ' ±oi ' ° School fund. 

dations,^14p- o , pr . ation ^ 13g . statigticg (i 84 0-i860), 72. 

Lotteries to aid education, 22. 
Milton Academy, reorganized, 76. 
Minuit, Peter, and early settlement, 8-9. 

Mitchell, Gov. Nathaniel, message to assembly on public education, 22. 
S Negroes, education, 95-106, 111-112, 151. 
New Castle Library Co. (Inc.), 22. 
Newspapers, statistics (1840-1860), 72. 

Normal schools, 79-81; Negro teachers, 100; report against establishment, 47-48. 
Normal training, legislation, 131-132. 

Original settlements, the Swedes, the Dutch, and the English, 7-10. 
Polk, Gov. Charles, message to assembly on education, 38. 
Ponder, Gov. James, on public schools, 84. 
Population, growth, 9-10. 
Population, school, 169. 
Powell, L. P., on freedom of religion in Swedish settlements, 10-11; on religious 

education in Delaware, 16; on the educational system among the Swedes, 13. 
Private schools, statistics, 83. See also Academies. 
Public schools, ante bellum period, 160; beginnings, 36-72; development, 66-72, 

113-121; statistics, 72, 169-175. 
Quakers, early schools, 15-16. 

Receipts and expenditures (State only), statistics, 170. 
Religion in Swedish settlements, 10-11. 
Religious education, early efforts, 16. 
Reports, status, 120. 
Revenue, law of 1875, 85-86. 
Ross, George, on education in Delaware, 16. 
Ross, Gov. W. H., analysis of school situation, 60-61. 
Rural schools, need for more money, 144. 
Salisbury, Gov. Gove, message to assembly on education, 82. 
Sanitation, schoolhouses, 145. 
School districts, recommended, 115-116. 
School fund, apportionment, 111; distribution in 1900, 130; first direct appropriation 

from State treasury, 90-91; period of 1796-1829, 19-23; statistics, 34-35, 114, 121, 

170. See also Conventions, educational. 
School grounds, statistics (1891-1898), 121. 
Schoolhouses, improvement, 152; statistics, 121. 
School laws. See Legislation. 
Schoolmasters, first Swedish, 12. 



INDEX. 181 

School population (1891-92), 120. 

School term, 153. 

School unit, arguments in favor of, 142-143. 

Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, work, 16. 

State board of education, 166; administration, 108-121; legislation, 134-135; powers 

and duties, 85, 124-125, 127-128; report (1913), 138-159. 
State education, 19-35. 
State library commission, established, 133. 

State school system, 108-121 ; administrations of Groves and Williams, 84-107; reor- 
ganization and development, 122-137. 
State superintendent of education, assistant, appointed, 87-88; first, 86; legislation 

regarding, 85; office reestablished, 149-152; powers and duties, 108. 
Stout, Gov. Jacob, message to assembly on education, 29. 
Sunday schools, amount paid for, 171-175; legislation, 27-28. 
Supervision, reforms proposed, 141. 

Swedes, education among, 10-13. See also Original settlements. 
Taxation, school, 32-33, 60-64, 90, 102-103, 135, 148-149, 157-158, 161, 163, 171-175; 

collection, 50; first State (1861-1875), 73-83; system of assessing and collecting, 143- 

144. 
Teachers, early Swedish, 12-13; education, 70-71; examination, 139; opinion of Judge 

Hall regarding, 47-48; qualifications and examinations, 126; supply, £3; training, 145; 
Teachers' certificates, 85; requirements raised, 111. 
Teachers' institutes, how financed, 88; Negroes, 112; proposed, 64. 
Teachers' salaries, 49-50, 144-145, 169-175. 
Temple, Gov. William, on public schools, 56. 

Textbooks, free, 118-119; list recommended, 64; selection, 88; uniform, 54. 
Thomas, Gov. Charles, message to assembly on education, 30-31. 
Traveling libraries, 129. 
Tunnell, Gov., on public schools, 129. 
Union School, New Castle Hundred, incorporated, 22. 
Unit, school. See School unit. 

Usellinx, Willem, and Swedish trading company, 8. 
Wagner, C. A., appointed commissioner of education, 149-150; on condition of schools, 

154-158. 
Wiekersham, J. P., on education among Dutch and Swedes, 11-12; on education in 

Pennsylvania, 15; on social life of the Swedish and Dutch settlers, 14. 
Williams, T. N., administration of, 91-98; report on public schools, 91. 
Wilmington, development and growth of public schools, 94-98; early education, 

16-18; organization of public schools, 69-70. 
Women, college for, affiliated with Delaware College, 146-147. 

o 



*No. .41. Agricultural and rural extension schools in Ireland. A. C. Monahan. 
No. 42. Minimum school-term regulations. J. C. Muerman. 
*No. 43. Educational directory,. 1916-17. 20 cts. 
*No. 44. The district agricultural schools Oi Georgia. C. H. Lane and D. J. Crosby* 

5 cts. 
No. 45. Kindergarten legislation. Louise Schofield. 

No. 46. Recent movements in college and university administration. S. P. Capen. 
No. 47. Report on the work of the Bureau of Education for the natives of Alaska, 

1914-15. 
No. 48. Rural school supervision. Katherine M. Cook and A, 0. Monahan. 
No. 49. Medical inspection in Great Britain. E. L. Roberts. 
No. 50. Statistics of State universities and State colleges, 1916. 

1917. 

No. 1. Monthly record of current educational publications, January, 1917. 5 cts. 

No. 2. English in the high school. J. F. Hosic. 

No. 3. Pine-needle basketry in schools. W. C. A. Hammel. 

No. 4. Secondary agricultural schools in Russia. W. S. Jesien. 

No. 5. Report of ao inquiry into the administration and support of the Colorado 

public-school system. Katherine M. Cook and A. C. Monahan. 
No. 6. Educative and economic possibilities of school-directed home gardening in 

Richmond, Ind. J. L. Randall. 
No. 7. Monthly record of current educational publications, February, 1917. 
No. 8. Current practice in city school administration. W. S. Deffenbaugh. 
No. 9. Department-store education. Helen R. Norton. 
No. 10. Development of arithmetic as a school subject. W. L. Monroe. 
No. 11. Higher technical education in foreign countries. A. T. Smith and W, S. 

Jesien. 
No. 12. Monthly record of current educational publications, March, 1917. 
No. 13. Monthly record of current educational publications, April, 1917. 
No. 14. A graphic survey of book publications, 189Q-1916. F. E. Woodward. 
No. 15. Studies in higher education in Ireland and Wales. George E. MacLean. 
No. 16. Studies in higher education in England and Scotland. George E. MacLean. 
No. 17. Accredited higher institutions. S. P. Capen. 

No. 18. History of public-school education in Delaware. Stephen B. Weeks. 
No. 19. Report of a survey of the University of Nevada. S. P. Capen. 
No, 20. Work of school children during out-of -school hours. C. D. Jarvis. 
No. 21. Monthly record of current educational publications, May, 1917. 
No. 22. Money value of education. A. Caswell Ellis. 
No. 23. Three short courses in home making. Carrie A. Lyford. 
No. 24. Monthly record of current educational publications — Index, February, 1916, 

to January, 1917. 
No. 25. Military training of youth of school age in foreign countries. W. S. Jesien. 
No. 26. Garden clubs in the schools of EnglewocKi, N. J. Charles O. Smith. 
No. 27. Training of teachers of mathematics in secondary schools. R. C. Archibold. 
No. 28. Monthly record of current educational publications, June, 1917. 
No. 29. Practice teaching for high-School teachers. 
No. 30. School extension statistics, 1915-16. Clarence Arthur Perry. 
No. 31. Rural teacher preparation in county training schools and high schools. 

H. W. Foght. 
No. 32. Work of the Bureau of Education for the natives of Alaska, 1915-16. 
No. 33. A comparison of the salaries of rural and urban superintendents of schools. 

A. C. Monahan and C. H. Dye. 
No. 34. Institutions in the United States giving instruction in agriculture. A. C, 

Monahan and C. H. Dye. 
No. 35. The township and community high-school movement in Illinois. H. A 

Hollister. 



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